15+ Calculated Supply Chain Tweaks for Better Inventory Control for eCom Stores
Is your inventory working for you — or are you constantly firefighting stockouts, overstock, and inefficiencies?
Either way, these advanced inventory control strategies for eCommerce stores are for you!
Whether you're managing fast-moving products or have slow movers gathering dust, smart supply chain tweaks can improve your inventory control while driving profits.
The secret?
Making calculated strategy changes, one at a time — and then reviewing the results to optimize again.
What now?
These 15+ calculated supply chain and inventory management hacks are the best place to start!
Let’s jump right into it.
1. Set Low-Stock Alerts for Your Products
Low-stock alerts are a simple but effective component of advanced inventory control strategies for eCommerce stores. Whether automatically triggering reorders when products fall below the minimum number or defined specific thresholds you have set for your bestsellers, alerts and automation can help you improve inventory control.
A more advanced example of this practice would be using your sales velocity data (how quickly a product sells over a specific period) to tweak your reorder thresholds for your high-demand products.
For instance:
- If you sell 100 red T-shirts in a week, that product has a weekly sales velocity of 100. Knowing this helps minimize the risk of running out of stock and avoids last-minute-panic reorders.
You could take this retail inventory optimization even further by connecting your low-stock alerts with supplier lead times — which, as you probably know, is the time it takes your supplier to deliver new stock after you place an order.
This way, your system doesn’t just alert you when stock is low; it also considers how long it will take to restock and adjusts reorder points accordingly.
Here’s how you can do the same:
- Figure out how long it takes your supplier to deliver
- Check how many items you sell each day
- Multiply how fast you sell (daily sales) by how long delivery takes (lead time)
- Set up alerts in your system to notify you when stock gets close to that number
- Link your inventory management software to your supplier
2. Prioritize Stock with Advanced Merchandising
Advanced merchandising isn’t just about making your products look good online — it’s about strategically showing the right products to the right customers at the right time. This approach helps you manage inventory better by directing attention to high-margin or overstocked items while keeping fast movers in the spotlight.
By using the right tech and tools (like ours!) that factor in key metrics like margins, sales velocity, and seasonal demand, you can optimize your product recommendations, sorting, and displays to drive both sales and inventory flow.
For example:
- Intersport DK used Kimonix’s profit-driven merchandising platform to match product recommendations with local demand and profitability. By optimizing their collections based on real-time data, they prioritized high-margin products and ensured better inventory control across their eCommerce stores.
The result?
A 93% increase in collections in just the first week of switching to our advanced multi-parameter approach.
Here’s how you can duplicate this strategy:
- Study your most important marketing and retail metrics, such as sales, inventory levels, margins, and customer preferences
- Segment products based on these factors to create meaningful merchandising groups
- Set rules for prioritizing different products in different categories, collections, or recommendations content
- Automate this advanced merchandising to adjust in real-time
3. Combine Weekly Supplier Orders
Another quick and simple way to improve inventory control for your Shopify store is to batch your weekly supplier orders. This means ordering all the products you need at the same time instead of placing multiple smaller orders.
Batching orders helps keep inventory flowing while saving on shipping costs. This also decreases the chances of you being hit by costly delays. And as an additional cost incentive, suppliers are more likely to offer discounts on larger orders.
The drawback, though, is that you will need to make sure your demand forecasting is on point. Underestimate your demand, and you could be left with stockouts during your busiest shopping days. Overestimate, and you’re stuck with dead stock.
So, what to do?
- Rely on annual sales trends to predict how much inventory you should order
- Study how long it takes for your suppliers to deliver orders
- Add a small buffer to your order quantities for fast-moving items
- Work with suppliers who allow you to make last-minute adjustments or add to your order if needed
If you’re new to batching orders, begin with smaller batches and adjust as you learn what works for your store. Also, pay attention to how well your forecast matches actual demand and continue to tweak it over time.
4. Track Stock with Barcode Scanning
Being organized and accurate goes a long way in helping you optimize your inventory management. Barcode scanning is a simple way to do just that. When products come into your warehouse, are put on shelves, or are sent to shoppers, a quick barcode scan records their movements.
Essentially, you are assigning every product a unique ID so you can track its journey step-by-step, ensuring nothing gets lost or misplaced. This reduces busy administrative work, which is especially useful if you’re a rapidly growing online retailer.
Of course, you want to integrate barcodes with inventory management software to keep your records up to date.
To implement barcode scanning
- Purchase handheld barcode scanners or mobile scanning devices
- Choose a barcode system and then assign unique codes to each product
- Print barcode labels and stick them on all inventory
- Connect the scanners to your inventory management systems
Even better, there’s an app for that — like iPacky.
5. Sort Inventory in Demand Zones
Another tweak you can make to improve your inventory control is sorting it by demand zones. This simply means placing your products closer to the customers who are most likely to buy them.
For instance:
- If you are selling in Europe and Australia, you could store your winter coats in your (or your fulfillment service’s) European warehouses and your summer stock in Southeast Asia, switching with the seasons
This not only helps keep delivery times quick but also reduces shipping costs. Partnering with regional fulfillment centers to reduce last-mile delivery times is even more effective.
This is something Amazon are masters at. By strategically placing fulfillment centers across the United States, they can keep delivery times quick, costs low, and stockouts minimal.
[Source: CNBC]
To take this further, you could move your suppliers closer by nearshoring. By being less dependent on suppliers too far away, you can reduce the effects of global disruption and improve your lead times.
6. Adjust Stock for Seasonal Trends, Automatically
Whether you’re a smaller, niche Shopify store or a big retailer, nothing can throw your inventory control out of balance like peak shopping days.
So, how to plan for the unpredictable?
Instead of looking at last year’s sales, advanced tools (like Shopify’s AI-driven apps or Inventory Planner) can analyze real-time trends, customer behavior, and even external factors like weather to continuously predict what will sell and when.
But you want to test seasonal trends in small batches before committing to large seasonal orders.
And what about nonpeak seasons?
Not all products will spike in demand at the same time.
Break down your inventory into categories (e.g., summer-specific, holiday-specific) and adjust each category separately. You can also coordinate with your suppliers to pre-order seasonal stock well before the busy period hits.
For example:
- If winter coats take 45 days to arrive, place your order early enough to have them ready as temperatures drop
But don’t order too much too soon.
Unexpected weather patterns can disrupt traditional demand forecasts, leading to an overstock of seasonal items.
- For instance, in December 2024, several retailers reported that unseasonably warm fall weather adversely affected their inventory optimization and sales of winter clothing, such as coats and boots
7. Do Weekly Stock Checks on Bestsellers
By regularly auditing your best-selling products, you can more accurately manage your inventory levels and prevent stockouts or overstock.
(You also want to be sure that your bestsellers are really your bestsellers by factoring in more than just sales volume — you can read more about that in detail here.)
On a small scale, this means using cycle counting to check your top-performing products — those that sell the fastest or contribute the most to your revenue.
For example:
- You would audit your bestsellers this week, your mid-tier products next week, and slow-moving items the week after. Over time, this rolling process ensures all inventory is checked without shutting down operations for a full physical count. It’s efficient and keeps your records accurate year-round.
On a more advanced level, you want to pair your stock checks with inventory management tools that automatically flag discrepancies and use predictive analytics to track patterns in these discrepancies, such as shrinkage (theft or loss).
8. Look into VMI (Vendor Managed Inventory) Options
Alternatively, you could let your suppliers manage your stock.
VMI is when you let your suppliers take charge of restocking your inventory. This means they are the ones who monitor your stock levels in real-time and send replenishments when needed, so you don’t have to handle it yourself.
This reduces the chances of running out of products and reduces your admin workload, while agreements ensure they deliver on time.
Let’s say you run an online pet supplies store that positions itself as a premium brand. Therefore, one of your top suppliers is a company that manufactures high-quality, grain-free dog food. Instead of you having to update them with restock orders, they would keep an eye on the data on their end to send when you were running low.
To implement this, you would need to:
- Have a good contract in place with agreed upon thresholds and accuracy rates
- Give suppliers access to your inventory management systems
- Rely on the supplier to spot low thresholds
- Have a shared dashboard that tracks inventory levels, order schedules, and delivery timelines
9. Pre-Kit (Pack) Your Bestsellers
Pre-kitting is an essential element of advanced inventory control strategies for eCommerce stores. It involves grouping your best-selling products in ready-to-ship packages.
Therefore, while bundling strategies focus on increasing AOVs, kitting is about efficiently and conveniently controlling inventory.
This means less time spent picking and packing individual items as orders come in. The most common strategy is to pre-pack your high-volume items to be ready to go during big sales days, like Black Friday.
Or bundling the products that customers often buy together.
For example:
- Instead of packing a charger and a phone case separately, create a "Starter Pack" that’s ready to go. And don’t forget to pre-assemble your holiday promotional bundles ahead of time, saving time and avoiding costly mistakes.
Here are some more pre-kitting strategies and tips:
- Use predictive analytics for seasonal bundling
- Keep separate inventory counts for pre-kitted packages
- Sell partially pre-packed kits that allow shoppers a bit of customization
- Add QR codes or barcodes to your pre-kitted packages
- Pre-kit components or materials together (material kitting)
That’s not to say pre-kitting and bundling strategies don’t line up.
10. Switch to Dropshipping for Low-Profit Products
Ten years ago, dropshipping started to lose its stigma, thanks to the launch of Shopify and later, easy-to-use tools like Printful. However, during the pandemic, the online shopping “boom” was when dropshipping really became a valuable inventory control solution for many retailers.
By incorporating dropshipping into their supply chains, online retailers can:
- Let a partner handle the storage, packing, and shipping of low-demand items
- Reserve valuable storage space for your bestsellers or high-margin products
- Test new products before investing too heavily in manufacturing
This inventory control strategy is particularly useful during the holiday seasons, when sales spike — and, with them, the pressure on fulfillment.
For example:
- A clothing retailer might offer holiday-themed sweaters or summer accessories through a dropshipper. This would mean they wouldn’t have to rearrange the warehouse to store short-term items.
It is also a practical strategy for expanding into new international markets, saving you the hassle and overhead of managing warehouses and fulfillment abroad.
11. Save Space with Unified Packaging
If you’re unfamiliar with unified (standardized) packing, it’s using the same size boxes for products.
For eCommerce brands and fulfillment centers, this means standardizing packaging across all products (as much as possible) to make the most out of warehouse space and speed up fulfillment.
Here’s the why.
Using the same size, shape, or type of packaging for multiple products:
- Simplifies operations
- Makes stocking and shipping more manageable
- Lowers costs — by buying materials in bulk and reducing packaging variations
12. Sell Slow Movers to Bulk Buyers
Slow movers — and worse, non-movers — take up valuable space and tie up your cash. While first prize is always prevention strategies such as advanced merchandising, you need strategies in place for dealing with slow-moving inventory in a way that doesn’t eat away at your profits.
A good strategy to test is bulk selling this inventory to B2B buyers. Yes, you’re selling at a discount, but doing it on a much larger scale.
The results?
Clearing warehouse space while recovering costs.
For example:
- Imagine you’re an online store selling fitness gear. You have a batch of yoga mats in unpopular colors sitting in your warehouse. Instead of waiting for them to sell, you offer a 30% discount to a local gym that needs mats for group classes. The gym gets a good deal, you free up space, and everyone wins!
And if you have slow movers, you could also partner with liquidation platforms — before it becomes dead stock. Platforms like B-Stock or Liquidation.com to sell large quantities of unsold inventory.
13. Use Predictive Restocking for Fast Movers
Predictive restocking is a key part of advanced inventory control strategies for eCommerce stores. It involves using data to stay one step ahead and ensure your shelves (virtual or real) are always stocked. It combines technology and planning to optimize your restocking.
To implement this strategy, you first need to monitor your hourly and daily sales to identify patterns in how quickly your top-selling items are moving. If a product sells 50 units daily on average and inventory dips below 300, you know it’s time to reorder.
Advanced tools like Shopify Analytics or third-party inventory apps can help you automate this tracking while also helping you make predictions.
Next, set specific reorder points for sales velocity and supplier lead times. This ensures new inventory arrives before you run out.
For instance:
- If you sell 100 units of a product weekly, and it takes 10 days to restock, then you should aim to reorder when stock reaches 150 units (100 x 1.5 weeks)
You would then want to look at the sales behavior of similar products to refine your restocking strategies even further. If demand for a similar product suddenly spikes, it might signal a trend that applies to your fast-moving inventory as well. This is especially useful for seasonal or complementary inventory (e.g., if sunscreen sales rise, hat sales might follow).
Lastly, you would need to tie it all together with automation. A good inventory management or optimization AI tool, such as TradeGecko or Inventory Planner, can automate reordering. Alternatively, you could outsource the whole caboodle with a service like Nogin.
14. Map Efficient Routes for Picking Stock
A little optimization goes a long way, especially if you have a large inventory and sprawling warehouses. Mapping efficient routes for picking stock is one area where a small tweak can improve your supply chain and inventory control.
This involves organizing your warehouse layout and picking paths to minimize the time and effort required to fulfill orders. It ensures that frequently picked products are strategically placed to reduce unnecessary movement (and time-wasting) when fulfilling orders.
A simple use of this strategy would be keeping your most popular products near the packing area so they’re quicker to grab when orders come in.
For example:
- If a bestseller like yoga mats is frequently ordered, store them in the racks closest to where orders are packed. This cuts down on unnecessary walking and speeds up fulfillment.
But it’s not all about demand. Ideally, you will reorganize your pick paths based on what works for your setup and sales. What may work for one may not necessarily be worth it for the other.
[Source: AMS]
You may also want to test batch picking. This is where you pick more than one order at a time to back-pick in groups. Let’s say you have three orders that include water bottles. A picker would grab all three on one trip instead of going back and forth for each combo.
Example of Picking Flow
Imagine you run an online store specializing in artisanal kitchenware. Your warehouse stocks hundreds of items, such as handcrafted cutting boards, ceramic bowls, and chef knives.
Your bestsellers, like premium knife sets and custom cutting boards, are stored near the packing area for quick access. During the holiday season, slotting software identifies a spike in demand for giftable items like specialty spice racks, so you temporarily move them closer to the packing stations.
At the same time, batch picking allows your team to efficiently pick up multiple orders for popular items, like ceramic plates, in one trip.
15. Skip the Warehouse with Cross-Docking
Alternatively, you could skip picking altogether.
Cross-docking significantly reduces or eliminates the need for picking, in the traditional sense. Instead of storing products in a warehouse, items are transferred directly from the incoming shipment (e.g., from suppliers) to the outgoing shipment (e.g., to customers or retail locations).
This strategy is best suited for eCommerce brands with high-turnover products, such as those selling in the food, electronics, medical supply, home improvement, or fashion trend niches.
[Source: The Geography of Transport Systems]
Here are just a few of the benefits:
- Improves demand forecasting and supplier coordination
- Reduces inventory holding costs
- Decreases delivery turnaround times
- Limits wastage (from losses and damages)
- Supports Just-in-Time (JIT) inventory strategies
16. Test AI-Powered Demand Sensing
Demand sensing is another strategy worth testing to improve your supply chain efficiency and control Shopify inventory.
Demand sensing involves using in-the-moment data to predict customer demand more accurately. When combined with AI, demand sensing allows for real-time supply chain and inventory management adjustments.
By going beyond simple automation and incorporating AI, online retailers can expect:
- More accurate forecasting
- Immediate insights
- Better decisions and strategies
For Shopify merchants looking to implement AI-powered demand sensing, several apps support this strategy, including Prediko Inventory.
The Final Word
At its core, advanced inventory control strategies for eCommerce stores are about more than just keeping products stocked. It’s about balancing your supply chain from supplier to customer to ensure it’s as quick and cost-effective as possible. All this while juggling data and trends to stay competitive.
And following trends to optimize doesn’t have to mean higher costs. Sustainability trends, for instance, aren’t just good for the planet — it makes smart financial sense as well.
Decisions like reducing waste, optimizing shipping, or sourcing from eco-friendly suppliers can cut costs while aligning with your shoppers' values, creating a win-win scenario.
However, no matter which inventory control and supply chain optimization strategies you implement, testing them before full-scale adoption is a must. A poorly planned rollout can lead to unexpected disruptions, higher costs, or missed opportunities.
An ideal way to mitigate this is by creating a digital twin — a virtual replica of your supply chain. By simulating changes in real-time, you can identify risks, fine-tune processes, and ensure your strategy is practical and effective before it goes live.
And, of course, you will need to back any strategy up with good merchandising practices.
Happy selling!