2020: Throughout the United States supplies were nearly impossible to get, and inventory levels plummeted. Our own supplies dropped to only about 8% of what we had been previously stocking. It was a very scary time.
2021: The supply chain loosened up, and companies everywhere began restocking. Demand skyrocketed for all companies, due to pent-up demand during the slowdown of 2020. Companies rushed to restock, including us.
2022: Just as quickly as demand skyrocketed upward, demand now plummeted downward. Because of the rush to build up inventories, coupled with the recessionary plummet in demand, companies everywhere were now overstocked.
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Our Response to 2022:
With Walmart, Target , Gap , Kohl’s and others trying to sell through a glut of extra merchandise piling up in store backrooms and warehouses, we took a bit different approach. We began discontinuing kits.
In mid-2022, we had about 320 different kits in our catalog. We kept them around in order to give you the widest selection we could, but many of them simply were not profitable. And with the minimum order size of each kit required by the factory for restocking them, we couldn’t afford to order such a wide swath of kits that sold slowly, and mostly just sat in our warehouse. Plus, with so many kits, we were running out of warehouse space.
Consequently, around 125 were marked to be discontinued. And of those 125 or so, we have now sold out of about half of them. We are now down to 63 closeout kits remaining.
When this started (with about 125 closeout kits) it was impractical to list all of the closeouts on our home page. That has now changed. All of our remaining closeouts can now easily be shown together. And they now are.
Right now we are showing 15 closeout kits in our “Kit(s) of the Day” section, at 70% off plus free body. These are the closeouts with the least remaining days-of-stock inventory, and marking them at such a steep discount will (hopefully) push them out faster. That should free up more space on our home page to do other things.
Then there are 48 additional closeout kits. These are set at 60% off plus free body. These are the closeouts that we have the most days-of-stock remaining. Kits might move from here into the “Kit(s) of the Day” section, and kits might move from that section down into this section. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The closeouts are moving out.
Our “Other Sale Items…” section (on our home page) lists ALL of our closeouts that are not kits, plus a handful of other items that we are the most overstocked on (measuring by days-of-stock, which factors in the sales rate together with the number in stock). Those items are subject to change as they sell.
And for our non-closeout kits, right now we have all of them discounted 30%. That, of course, could change at any time. When they do change, they will likely move to 20% discount (instead of 30%), with a handful of the most overstocked ones placed on sale for 50% off. But right now they are all 30% off.
Hope this makes some of our sales strategy clearer to everyone.
Thanks so much!
Nevin Pratt, CEO
Bountiful Baby