No matter what type of business you run, if you’re selling products, keeping them safe is non-negotiable. Whether you’re storing electronics, food, clothing, medical supplies, or manufactured goods, products safely directly impacts customer satisfaction. It’s also going to impact your brand, your reputation, and your bottom line.
Get it wrong and all of these things could go to pot very quickly. You don’t have to have a massive security budget or a warehouse full of high tech gadgets to make sure that you keep your inventory protected. However, with a few smart steps, any business, no matter the size, can create a safe and secure, reliable environment for their products. Here are 7 simple, effective ways to make sure that your business products remain safe every step of the way.
- Consider climate control. An overlooked but critical part of Product Safety is climate control. Many products can be damaged by temperature changes, humidity, or improper storage conditions. Heat, cold, and moisture can ruin inventory before it even gets to your customer. And that’s why proper climate control is a smart investment and not just something that’s nice to have. Installing reliable climate control systems that maintain a consistent temperature and humidity level across the board will be helpful. From here, you can monitor conditions regularly with sensors or smart devices. You could also train your team to recognise and respond to climate related risks. If you end up with ruined products because of a lack of temperature control, you’re going to spend a lot of money trying to rectify this mistake.
- Believe in the power of labelling. Organization is not glamorous, but one of the easiest ways to protect your inventory and your products is to label everything. You need to be able to track what you have and avoid damage. And with shelved items being properly labeled and like products kept together, you’ll be able to maintain organization across your inventory.
- Research the right storage solutions. Not every product out there is created equal, and that includes the ones that you sell. That means not all storage methods would be equal either. You may need pallet racks for larger and heavy items, or shelving units for smaller products. You might need to have cold storage for medical products or perishables and bins and containers for loose goods. The type of storage systems that you use will directly be impacted by the products that you’re selling.
- Apply limited access to sensitive areas. Security is not just about cameras and alarms. Sometimes the security is as simple as knowing who’s allowed to be where. Controlling access to your products by locking doors and using keycards or codes is one good step to take, but assigning staff based on role or responsibility to have certain levels of access is also a great idea. If you have very sensitive products that can be degraded very quickly by the touch of the oils on human skin, you need to minimize how many people touch those products.
- Stay on top of your inventory management. A quick way to lose control of Product Safety is by losing track of what you have. If your inventory numbers don’t match, products go missing, expire or become damaged without anyone realising until it’s too late. With solid inventory management, you can avoid overstocking, which can lead to clutter and damage, and prevent understocking, which can delay orders. You’ll also be able to rotate stock properly. This keeps the good stock to the front and the newer stock to the back so that nothing is going to go out of date, which costs you money.
- Be prepared for emergencies. Sometimes things go wrong, The power can go out, water can leak, and equipment can fail. All of these things can pose threats to your Product Safety and the best way to protect your inventory is to have a back up plan for all of these worst case scenarios. If a freezer fails or a storage area overheats, knowing how to respond quickly can save thousands in lost inventory and keep your customers happy at the same time.
- Don’t underestimate the strength of your team. The best defence when it comes to protecting your products is the team of people you have around you. Training is so important, so you should be showing new hires how to store and handle your products safely and review how to operate and monitor climate control systems with your team. Training everyone on how to spot the signs of spoilage and damage is also going to really make a difference to how your products fare.
