Cosmetics Inventory Management Services
Cosmetics has taken the ecommerce industry by storm.
In fact, 52% of online shoppers said they have purchased a beauty product from a direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand in the past.
This goes to show there is high demand for independent online beauty brands. But even with so much opportunity, there are challenges — especially when it comes to managing inventory
ShipBob is a premium 3PL that helps brands in the cosmetics industry better manage their inventory.
Learn more about ShipBob’s cosmetics inventory management solutions.
ShipBob offered us the best solution and was tailored toward our needs as an early startup business on its way to growing.
Tamarin Oblowitz,
co-founder of Baja Bae
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What is cosmetics inventory?
Cosmetics inventory refers to managing a wide range of SKUs that are similar but are offered in a variety of variations.
Some of the most basic cosmetics items include mascara, foundation, lipstick, eye shadow, and powders. Cosmetics inventory requires a more complex inventory management process since products are often sold in a variation of colours and shades.
When selling cosmetics online, it’s not uncommon to have to manage a large number of SKUs while also trying to optimise storage, track best-selling items, and forecast demand.
Simpilify cosmetics inventory management with ShipBob
With a global fulfilment network and best-in-class technology, ShipBob offers a wide range of fulfilment capabilities to help you create a cosmetics logistics strategy, including intuitive inventory management software, flexible fulfilment, advanced data and analytics, and other world-class logistics solutions.
ShipBob helps you grow your business faster and still provide a great customer experience as you expand.
Here is an overview of ShipBob’s cosmetics logistics and inventory management services:
1. Track inventory in real time
ShipBob’s fulfilment technology designed to help manage inventory in real time. With the right real-time inventory management solution, you can reduce risks of inventory shrinkage, inaccurate inventory reports, stockouts, and backorders.
With inventory tracking software in place, your orders and inventory are synced in real time.
This makes it much easier to track inventory by increasing inventory visibility and providing insights into when it’s time to replenish inventory, run a promotion, and track slow-moving items that are no longer generating sales.
2. Easily manage SKUs
As you grow your cosmetics brand, you will deal with SKU proliferation. But holding on to certain variations of cosmetics items that don’t sell can cut into your profit margins in the long run. To stay profitable, it’s important to optimise inventory by determining slow-moving SKUs and possibly discontinuing them.
With ShipBob’s inventory tracking software, you can easily track slow-moving items vs. fast-moving items and make decisions on what SKUs to discontinue or replenish.
From ShipBob’s dashboard, you also have the option to assign a lot number to specific items stored in our fulfilment centre. After we receive your warehouse receiving order (WRO), we will store the items in separate locations, according to their lot number.
You can learn more about our lot tracking process here.
Subscription order management
For most online cosmetics brands, customer acquisition costs are high. By implementing a subscription box or recurring orders model, you can ship products to your customers on a regular, predetermined basis.
With ShipBob’s easy integrations, merchants can seamlessly connect their online store to ShipBob’s technology and leverage subscription apps (e.g., ReCharge, Bold Subscriptions, etc.), or use ShipBob’s Developer API to get subscription box orders fulfiled automatically and reliably.
Distributed inventory
By partnering with a 3PL that offers a network of fulfilment centres, you have the option to split inventory across multiple locations, known as distributed inventory. Utilising fulfilment centres in different regions can reduce transit times for customers and shipping costs for you.
With ShipBob’s robust fulfilment network, you can store inventory in the locations that make the most sense for your business. Our technology automatically routes each order to the fulfilment centre that’s closest to the shipping destination for the most efficient delivery.
Read on to learn more about ShipBob’s capabilities.
Distributed inventory
With ShipBob’s network of fulfilment centres, you can strategically split your inventory across our locations to get your products from point A to point B more quickly and affordably. Storing inventory near your customers helps reduce the shipping zones and costs associated with shipping orders to faraway destinations.
Distributed inventory also helps you stay competitive by offering fast shipping to your customers. When an order is placed, ShipBob’s algorithm automatically selects the warehouse and carrier that will give you the quickest turnaround at the best price. This strategy has helped our merchants bring 13% savings to their bottom line.
Go Global Easily
ShipBob´s Shipping Program enables fast and cost effective delivery for all UK, European and Global destinations. Working with any of our ecommerce store integrations, you can reach your customers with the best local and international carrier options.
Whether you ship from one or multiple fulfilment centre locations, you can offer fast delivery options to all your customers. Our proprietary algorithm does all the hard work to give you the most cost effective and in-demand delivery options.
Order management
At ShipBob, we track your orders from A to Z. Filter orders by status, search for specific orders, see a quick timeline view of where your order is in the fulfilment process (e.g. when an order is picked, packed, or shipped), easily find shipping-related information (e.g., weights, dimensions, or carrier service), and get a quick snapshot of any orders that require action.
With order management software for your direct-to-consumer and wholesale shipments, you can manage subscriptions, make changes to your orders post-purchase, map your store’s shipping options to ShipBob, and automatically share tracking information with your customers.
Inventory management
At ShipBob, we empower merchants to manage their inventory with the right tools and guidance. It’s easy to view the status of inventory and quantity on hand across locations at any point in time, identify slow-moving inventory with high storage costs, and gain insights into the performance of units sold over time by channel.
Our inventory management software helps you set reminders to proactively replenish inventory with reorder notifications, bundle your products for promotions, make inventory transfer requests, and much more.
Reporting and analytics
To provide you with visibility into our operations and performance, and also hold ourselves accountable, ShipBob’s free analytics tool is packed with charts to help you with everything from year-end reporting, to better supply chain decision-making.
Data can be a competitive advantage, and our reports show an analysis of which fulfilment centres you should stock, days of inventory left before you run out, impact of promotions on stock levels, each shipping method’s average cart value, shipping cost, and days in transit, your fulfilment cost per order, storage cost per unit, and much more.
End-to-end customer experience
We care about the customer experience as much as you and strive to be an extension of your team. From custom branded boxes to free plain packaging, ShipBob works with you to provide the unboxing experience you want. We also help you offer the fastest, most cost-effective shipping options to meet your customers’ expectations.
As soon as an order ships, tracking is pushed back to your store. We also offer return management services, allowing customers to generate return shipping labels and track returns, while getting your products processed and back into your available inventory as efficiently as possible.
How ShipBob improves your fulfilment and logistics
Save on fulfilment costs
Coffee creamer brand Prymal joined ShipBob in 2019 and was quickly able to save $8,000 per month on fulfilment costs, while at the same time achieving 4x growth.
Improve your conversion rate
Not only was BAKblade able to scale internationally by partnering with ShipBob, but they found adding 2-Day Shipping increased their conversions as well.
Store, ship, and grow internationally
Sunglasses brand Ombraz distributed their inventory across 3 fulfilment centres in two different countries. This has allowed them to ship to 55 countries on seven continents.
