Online retail customers are growing rapidly, and warehouse space is becoming increasingly tight, leading to warehouse relocation and the opening of branch warehouses. Generally speaking, merchants have a deeper understanding of front-end sales but often lack deep knowledge of back-end warehouse and distribution operations. Success in front-end sales brings a sense of satisfaction, making them feel that nothing is too difficult or complex. This can lead to complacency about warehouse issues, creating more problems. Warehouse management is all about details. Everyone understands the big picture, but a single detail can halt your shipping for an entire day.

  1. Customize the Relocation Plan 1) Online sellers prioritize customer experience. Customer experience includes three aspects: pre-sales, delivery, and after-sales. Delivery efficiency greatly affects customer experience, so during relocation, you must minimize errors like wrong or missing shipments and shipping stoppages. My simple approach is: when inventory allows, allocate a portion of goods, pack them in standard packaging with standard labels, reduce the time needed for inbound, and avoid unnecessary delays to normal shipping. Allocate a portion of goods for relocation first, ideally covering all SKUs in the warehouse. Only prepare the incoming goods list and system inbound order, including product barcodes, names, and quantities. It's best to pre-assign location codes. 2) Prepare hardware and plan comprehensively. While counting goods, prepare pallets, hydraulic carts, shelves, printers, packing stations, scanners, computers, office supplies, etc. Ensure the new environment has no network issues, electrical issues, system setup issues, and all consumables are in place. Pre-check the environment to ensure there are no problems, so you can operate immediately upon arrival. 3) Standardized products should ideally be palletized. This speeds up loading and unloading, reducing product damage and time loss during relocation. 4) Plan the warehouse layout. Before relocation, you must create a new warehouse blueprint, install shelves, label shelves with location codes, barcodes, and product names, and pre-place storage bins.

  2. Coordinate Relocation Staff and Set Up the New Warehouse Before relocation, you must arrange and plan personnel, assigning tasks to individuals. When relocation begins, everyone should do their own job, avoiding duplication and neglect. Set up the new warehouse in the system, create inbound orders, allocate according to the plan, and perform inbound after counting. You must achieve zero discrepancy because only with zero discrepancy will customer service know during order review that if the new warehouse is out of stock, orders cannot be transferred.

  3. Relocate and Ship Simultaneously During relocation, the old warehouse continues shipping without stopping. The only difference is that bulk stock decreases as products are quickly moved to the new warehouse. According to the pre-made plan, arrange personnel to replenish storage bins on shelves while organizing the bulk area. Replenishment and bulk area organization should proceed simultaneously, ideally with multiple threads running to improve efficiency.

  4. Test Shipping After the first batch of relocation is complete, organize the warehouse. After organization, test order processing by allocating a small number of orders to the new warehouse for 2–3 days. If no issues arise, the new warehouse starts shipping, and the old warehouse stops. Move the remaining goods from the old warehouse to the new warehouse in the same manner, ensuring both shipping and relocation proceed without conflict.

Key Cautions +

  1. Avoid the "big pot" approach If everything is done without orderly planning and you rush all goods at once, you'll encounter various problems at the new warehouse, and even the most capable person cannot coordinate effectively.
  2. Location codes Before relocation, you must assign location codes according to standard naming principles. Otherwise, adjusting locations at the new warehouse will consume manpower and materials and reduce shipping efficiency. Even daily small-scale product adjustments cannot compensate for some issues.
  3. Avoid a cooperative management model Once you reach an agreement with an external warehouse for outsourcing, you must trust them absolutely. If you don't trust them, don't relocate. Warehouse management should have only one party; if there is a Party A, there is no Party B, and vice versa. Because professional warehouse management involves coordinated planning, such as location arrangement, which may disrupt the placement of hot-selling products to prevent aisle congestion during secondary picking, and fine-tuning based on product characteristics. However, there will be a磨合期 (break-in period) and adaptation period during which shipping efficiency may decrease. Some merchants who know nothing about warehousing might feel cheated, thinking their warehouse is run by incompetent people. In reality, most traditional Taobao merchants pick using shipping orders and are unfamiliar with sowing, picking, and mixed picking modes. For products with around 5 items per order, a fast picker can complete 3–5 orders in 2 minutes, but with secondary sorting, efficiency can reach 25–30 orders in 5 minutes. If management is based on distrust and both parties manage the warehouse simultaneously, the entire process will become distorted and may eventually collapse.
  4. Packaging For merchants with generally large products, packaging materials require careful thought. How to improve efficiency, enhance your brand image, and build your store's reputation is worth considering. I don't agree with using burlap sacks for packaging, even if necessary; you can use customized sacks, such as those with your logo for home textiles. However, to do this, you must first determine your development direction. For example, merchants acting as agents for others' products may have different considerations if agency rights are unstable. For merchants with their own brands, I think focusing on brand building and details is more important. Warehouse management emphasizes detail and innovation. How to save costs, improve efficiency, reduce staffing, and increase accuracy is worth our consideration. The above are my insights on relocation; I hope they help everyone. -END- The best FMCG distributor learning platform in China Focusing on providing professional, practical, and actionable tutorials for enterprises and distributors Committed to helping Chinese FMCG distributors grow rapidly The most professional and practical knowledge base in the FMCG industry Reply with the red number below to get corresponding content Reply with number 1 to view the complete knowledge base | 001 Excellent article selection | 002 Distributor market operations | 003 Terminal visit management | 004 Sales supervisor skills | 005 Sales improvement techniques | 006 Channel expansion | 007 Managing distributors | 008 Distributor development | 009 Distributor internal operations management | 010 Team management | 011 Efficient distribution techniques | 012 Sales manager's eighteen skills | 013 KA operation strategies | 014 First lesson for new salespeople | 015 Internet, brands | 016 Distributor B2B transformation | [Long press QR code to follow]