Most of what you lose, you did not lose to thieves
When stock goes missing, the instinct is to suspect people. Sometimes that is right. But the standard definition of shrinkage contains three causes, and only one of them is theft.
3 min read
Stock control
Counting, scanning, reconciling and knowing what actually sat on the shelf when you promised it to someone.
4 pieces
Barcodes when half your suppliers don't print them
Advice about barcode scanning usually assumes every product arrives with a barcode. In an Ethiopian shop, a good share of what you sell does not. That does not mean scanning is off the table; it means you need two answers.
2 min read
Cycle counting instead of the Sunday audit
The full stock count is a ritual: shop closed, everyone in on a Sunday, a number at the end that nobody quite believes. There is a better way to spend the same hours, and there is published support for it.
Your stock record is probably wrong, and there is research that says so
Every argument for taking stock control seriously rests on one premise: that the number in your system is usually not the number on your shelf. That premise has been measured, by academics, at a retailer that already had a real system.