It turns out that too much wool is not a good thing, whether you’re a knitting store or an Australian sheep. Chris is a renegade Merino sheep who apparently got separated from his flock in Canberra and missed his regular appointments with the shearer. Although he evaded capture several times, he was finally sedated and champion Australian sheep shearer Ian Elkins restored him to health by removing over 40 kilos (88 pounds) of wool.

You might think that almost 100 pounds of wool from one sheep would be wonderful, but the matted, soiled fleece is more of a novelty than a thing of beauty.  And carrying around all that extra wool was a health hazard to Chris (name after a character in the Irish sitcom Father Ted), who could have died just from falling over and not being able to get up. Happily he is recovering nicely in his freshly-shorn state.  

Here are a few parallels between this famous sheep’s condition and having too much wool in a knitting shop — or too much inventory in any kind of store:

1) The veterinarian said that Chris was almost blinded by all that wool when he was found.  It’s sometimes hard to see that you have too much inventory, isn’t it?

2) The dangers of being overstocked include having older items become shopworn, out of fashion and unsalable.

3) It is unhealthy to have too much of your capital tied up in stock, especially if it means that you can’t pay fixed expenses or afford to advertise

4) New merchandise, like a fresh coat of Merino wool, is likely to be more appealing than older goods. Keeping your inventory turning so that it is always up-to-date is better than having too much in storage. 

It’s important to have a way to regularly check the state of your inventory.  Two important tools are tracking the age of each item (either thorough date codes on your price tags, or data entered in your POS system), and making sure to calculate your inventory turns.  If your annual sales at retail equal your average inventory at retail, your stock probably needs a “shearing” — and a plan to keep it under control in the future.

Happy Retailing,

Carol “Orange” Schroeder