How To Prevent Your Products From Expiring

Product expiration in simpler terms means a product has become harmful for use or cannot perform its initial purpose after a period of time. Expiry dates are usually written on the package of products and often comes along with the manufacturing date.

Retailers should be worried about expiration of goods since we want to sell only products in their best states to our customers. Interestingly, 85% of customers check for expiration dates before they purchase anything especially in physical shops. Online customers also request for expiration dates of products to ensure that they don’t receive expired products. This shows that expiration of products is very important to the customer and can cause a loss to your profit margin. Well, this article intends to show you how to prevent expiration of products and prevent losses.

Confirm dates of incoming goods

You might be thinking, why should I check dates of incoming products? The answer to your question is to be certain of the expiration date and manufacturing date.? Some products sadly have a shorter life span and if the demand for that product is low, it is likely that those products will expire while still sitting in your inventory. Another reason is, sometimes suppliers also clear their inventory of almost expired goods to retailers so don’t always jump at very cheap products from suppliers. They might be on their way to expiration. Otherwise, do well to check dates before you accept them.

Sell old products before new products.

Common mistakes that can lead to expiration of products is selling new products as they arrive while old products are still available. A crucial cycle to adopt is to sell all old products before new products to prevent old products from expiring. This cycle only works assuming new products have dates further away from old products dates. For instance, Michelle owns a rice shop. Her old products are set to expire on 20th December, 2020 and her new products are also set to expire on 15th June 2021. What the cycle says is, Michelle has to sell the old products nearing expiration before selling her new products which is a reasonable thing to do.

Position products nearing expiration.

A way to ensure that products nearing expiration are long sold before they expire is to position such products to customers’ reach in supermarkets and marts where customers pick their own products. This is not to trick customers into buying those products but to prevent customers from picking products that have a relatively longer time to expire while leaving products nearing expiration. This strategy helps you to sell all goods nearing expiration before they expire.

Reduce prices of products nearing expiration

Customers love it when retailers reduce prices of products. Nine out of ten customers will reach out for products that have reduced prices. Capitalizing on that, retailers can reduce prices of products nearing expiration to encourage customers to purchase those products. Before you talk about losing your profit in this strategy, let me chip this in: expiration time is not the period to be thinking about your profits. Getting back your capital should be your priority. Which do you want, reducing and getting back your capital or leaving products to expire and losing both profit and capital?

Take Away

You can run B1G1F (Buy One Get One Free) promos.

Give products nearing expiration to charity. Do not throw them away.

Combine products nearing expiration with other products that have high sales.