# How do you store your inventory



## tkster95 (Aug 11, 2011)

I have about 25 designs in sizes ranging from small-2xl (some up to 5xl) that I sell shirts online, and trade shows and wholesale / consignment to about 7 local shops. I try to keep inventory on some of the better selling ones and filter out the designs that don't sell.

I do it all out of my house and try to utilize my limited space wisely.

I seem to be in a constant search for a good stocking system. When I first stated out I had about 8 designs and I rolled them up and stacked them according to design and size but as I added more designs the task of printing then rolling them up became too much... at that point I began to fold the shirts according to size (if say I have 5 smalls of a particular design, I fold them up as one.. same as how they do it when I get the shirts blank) then I stack all the sizes for a design one on top of each other. 

I've been folding and stacking for about 8 months and its alright.... however my piles get real messy real quick. I spend an hour or so and fold them all up nice and perfect... then the next day sales come and I end up rifling through all them trying to get orders out and by the end of the day I have a big ball of messed up shirts. 

I figure there's got to be a better way.

I though about hanging them up and it seems like a good opting. If their hanging I can easily group them together. 

However, not sure if its a suitable for long term storage.. If I have a shirt hanging up for a few months up to a year in some cases... when I take it off are the shoulders going to be stretched out or something? What about for hoodies? I'd end up using the cheap plastic hangers. I've also heard people mentioning dust being an issue.

Another thing.... If say I have heavy duty racks that are say 6 feet across... how many shirts am I going to be able to store on them? 100, 200? not sure... I'm trying to gauge how many shirts I could fit in a spare bedroom with a bunch of 6 foot or so racks.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.


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## KristineH (Jan 23, 2013)

Why don't you fold or roll then individually? That way your whole stack won't get messy when you pull one shirt. 
That's what we used to do when we had a retail store and did transfers. We had hundreds of designs available and our shirts rolled with elastic bans by size in bins


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## tkster95 (Aug 11, 2011)

I used to roll them up individually, however the process took forever... plus now that I sell wholesale and what not, I found myself unrolling them for some orders. 

I tried folding them individually as well, however they'd still get pretty messed up after a day or two.. maybe its just me haha.

I though about folding them individually and putting them in some sort of zip lock bag, however I'd like to avoid using unnecessary materials like that if I could figure out a better process instead.

I'm still really considering hanging them up... I think for my situation it would be a great solution... however, I'm just not sure how many I'll be able to fit on a rack and what not. 

I saw other shirt companies storing shirts in cardboard boxes that are mostly enclosed with an opening in the front. It seems as if they're also stackable. Not sure what they're called and haven't been able to find them online yet. Anyone know were to get them? I'm thinking either this or hanging them.

Thanks.


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## pshawny (Feb 27, 2008)

How about some 5 tier plastic shelves? You could stack one size of each design on a different shelf. Small on the top shelf and 2XL on the bottom shelf. The other things are called cube organizers, or cube storage. You could also make your own out of cardboard boxes from uline.


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## codyjoe (May 6, 2013)

Obviously storing your inventory varies greatly upon printing capabilities, space, storage capacities and so-on. For us, we're a custom printing shop (don't sell pre-determined designs) so we print-to-order. Meaning, when everything is finalized we order in the shirts from a local supplier and begin printing within a few hours most times. When it comes to storage we have all customer orders placed in their own labeled boxes and set on our storage shelves in the back warehouse.


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## Techprint (Dec 20, 2012)

Simple, cascader hangers.


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## tkster95 (Aug 11, 2011)

Cool, thanks for the ideas everyone. I like the cascading hanger idea I may end up giving that a shot sometime down the road. 

I looked into the bin boxes however found them to be pretty expensive. Would cost me like $400 to get all that I needed! Also found that enough racks to fit all the shirts I needed would cost me about $500. Both of those options are a bit too pricy for me.

I came up with a pretty cool idea for now though... I get a lot of boxes from ordering shirts through my distributor.. they're the perfect size and essentially free. What I did was take two boxes that were the same size and jam one of them into the other, then fold the flaps in as well.. the extra support of the second box actually makes it pretty strong. I then stack them 5 high with the open part (witch used to be the top of the box) facing out. It makes a pretty sturdy shelving system that fits folded up shirts perfectly. I can get about 25-30 shirts on each tier before it starts to cave in a bit. I'm eventually going to line up these towers in my spare bedroom... I took some measurements and I should be able to fit about 150 boxes in there... that means I could fit 25-30 prints for 150 designs nice and neatly stacked all in my spare bedroom. I love it cause I don't have to spend any money on it lol.


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