With the prime candle selling season on the horizon, now is the time to make those forecasts for your Candles of Eden inventory requirements. When you place orders based on careful forecasts, you ensure you have enough product to meet sales demand, while not overstocking and tying up too much money in inventory. There are any numbers of things to consider when deciding stock requirements – things unique to your own business. However, there are basic things to consider that are common to all businesses when it comes to forecasting.

While today’s sophisticated inventory-management software programs take much of the brainwork out of inventory requirement forecasting, you still need to know what goes into a typical forecast. If you do not use any kind of software program that tracks ordering, sales, returns, and inventory levels then you will need to decide yourself, based on certain information, what you need in terms of inventory levels for different product classifications.

The primary thing you want to look at is actual prior year’s sales. You definitely want to look back at last year’s sales for a product line such as SoyLuscious® Soy Candles. You may want to go back another year or two and see how these high quality soy candles sold. This way you can see if there’s a sales trend that may extend into the upcoming season, you are planning for. Looking at your prior season or years’ sales means you are evaluating historical data that are past snapshots of your business activity. You can use this data to determine whether history will repeat itself in the form of the same amount of sales in the future, or whether you anticipate even more sales of your Candles of Eden and other product lines.

One thing to look at when looking at historical data is whether there was any unusual activity in a prior season or year. You can then adjust your inventory forecast accordingly, accounting for unusual activity. For example, maybe your sales for last fall’s selling season were lower than usual so you are hesitant about ordering for this fall – you do not want to end up with too much inventory sitting in your store. Upon further analysis, due to notes attached to past sales data, you see that there was major road construction outside your place of business for a six-week period, which diverted traffic away from your area, and hence caused sales to drop. That was unusual activity, not common each season to your business. When you forecast inventory requirements for the coming season, you need to consider this. With no road construction, causing people to avoid the area you operate in, you will probably see an increase in sales this season and will need that extra inventory.

That’s why it’s wise to attach comments to inventory and sales data as you record them each month. I know a retailer who writes down what the major weather events are each week and month, which affect his business. He sells food products and he records heat waves, cold spells, storm activity, and the like that affect his sales. If he sees great soda drink and ice cream sales in May due to an unusually hot spring he makes a note of it. When he forecasts the following year for May he doesn’t necessarily order as much as the previous May if the weather forecasts show it’s likely to be a cooler spring in his region. It’s all about gathering information and using it wisely. While it doesn’t guarantee perfect decision-making, it betters the chances that your decision-making will improve.

Another thing to consider when forecasting for future inventory requirements is what types of promotions you have planned for the upcoming prime soy candle-selling season. Do you plan a major advertising blitz or promotional campaign for SoyLuscious® Soy Candles? Did you have a similar campaign last season? If you did, base your inventory requirements on how that campaign did and increase your forecast accordingly. Customers may be anticipating the same kind of promotion this season. If you had no such promotion last season, you will need more inventory this season. The advertising and promotion activity is sure to cause an increase in sales and you will need sufficient inventory to cover this.

If you’re in a mall location, or part of a major downtown shopping district, you have to consider their own promotions that may bring extra traffic to your store. You will need more inventory if a mall is planning a fall promotion of its own to bring traffic to the mall. Maybe the downtown business association in your area has a campaign they are launching to improve business in the downtown core. You have to keep alert for these announcements and have the inventory in place to be ready for a greater influx on customers.

In addition, you have to consider events totally unrelated to your business, which will happen in your area. Is there a particular group having a major convention in your area? Will all these participants be staying in hotels and motels close to your place of business? You may get increased business during a week because of this. You need to keep up-to-date on local happenings so you can plan your inventory requirements. Is there a festival unique to your region coming up that draws the community out and about, as well as tourists? You need to account for that when you forecast your inventory requirements. This is all on top of the normal interest for candles that are part of the coming season. You will increase your Candles of Eden sales when you keep abreast of what is going on in your area in terms of events and happenings.

Forecasting inventory requirements for your SoyLuscious® Soy Candles and other product lines is not rocket science. It is using historical sales data, past unusual activity, your own promotions plans, and those of third parties relevant to your business, and other data wisely. You put it all together to come up with an educated “guesstimate” of what is likely to occur. I use the term guesstimate because if we knew for sure what was going to happen we’d all be stock market billionaires due to our perfect forecasting skills. We’re not, but we can be intelligent forecasters who use relevant data at hand to help us make wise Candles of Eden and other product inventory plans.