From fitness subscriptions to sleep remedies, nutritional supplements to meditation apps – the wellness industry continues to flourish and take up space in public consciousness.
The concept of wellness may once have referred to workout videos and a juice cleanse, but today it covers everything from physical health, fitness, appearance, sleep, mental health and nutrition. Recent McKinsey research of 7,500 global consumers found that the public’s focus on wellness is only increasing – while their perception of their own wellness fell far short of their willingness to spend money on improving it.
Clearly this is a ready and eager market – and a rush of wellness startups have inundated the e-commerce space in response, commonly fronted by fresh-faced celebrities and influencers. Almost half of consumers now consider personal wellness their top priority, and McKinsey projects the wellness industry in North America to be worth an eye-watering $1.5 trillion by the end of the decade.
MAKING MOVES IN WELLNESS
For businesses, there’s masses of potential for building a niche in the wellness industry; the diversity of products covers everything from wearable heart-rate monitors to mushroom teas, CBD-infused gummies and athleisure wear. It’s also common for wellness brands to offer customizable packages on a subscription basis, providing fertile ground for long-term customer loyalty.
But with an ever-shifting and expectant consumer market, new trends to keep track of and significant pressure to stand out, there are plenty of risks for wellness companies of falling behind competitors. Businesses who want to build a trusted, noticeable wellness brand will need the technology to deliver an elite service in an increasingly crowded sector.
Here’s how brands in the wellness space can get ahead of the rest by using a high-performance inventory planning tool like Inventory Planner.
Support the power of subscriptions
Wellness is rarely achieved in a one-off purchase – and tends to deal in items that need regular replenishing; protein powders, supplements, skin products and the like. Even fitness apparel (Kate Hudson’s Fabletics, for instance) offers better deals to customers when they sign up on a subscription basis.
Subscriptions are great for securing regularly occurring revenue, but from an inventory perspective, the pressure to have the right products available at the right time is higher than ever. With data-led inventory planning, predicting incoming demand from subscriptions and all other sales is made much easier.
Inventory Planner’s reliable sales forecasts factor in not only historic data but seasonality, microtrends, lead times and market shifts, so you can purchase in good time and stay in supply of the products your customers regularly expect.
Stay ahead of personalization
Wellness customers expect their products to be catered specifically to their needs – they want to mix up their vitamins as seasons change, adjust the quantity and delivery frequency of their vegan shampoo, and have skincare chosen for them based on a personalized quiz about their skin type. For this reason, inventory for wellness merchants is often made up of custom bundles and kits with multiple variants, which can easily become muddled or go partially out of stock if the retailer doesn’t have access to full inventory visibility and automated stockout warnings.
With in-depth insights across your entire inventory that go as granular as size, style and product type, you’ll be able to make laser-targeted purchasing decisions based on which of your products are hot sellers, which low-stocked components are leaving bundles partially unfulfilled and which outdated items are stewing in the warehouse. In combination with Inventory Planner’s data-led forecasting, wellness brands can purchase bundles and kits well in time to ensure customers aren’t caught short in their next customized delivery.
Ride the wave of trends and influencer effects
Wellness is constantly evolving and innovating and trends emerge fast. It’s also one of the e-commerce spaces most impacted by the power of celebrity; A-listers such as Elle McPherson, Jessica Alba, Cindy Crawford and the Kardashians regularly rave about new wellness trends to their legions of followers. As well as staying aware of the ‘next big thing’ in your sector, it’s vital that your inventory planning technology allows you to adapt quickly to influencer-fueled spikes in demand and to spot new trends among different consumer groups.
If you’re still monitoring inventory with spreadsheets and having to frequently consolidate data between them, you’re more likely to fall behind when responding to trends – going out of stock of your trending items as you manually calculate demand for them.
Inventory Planner allows you to forecast trends by detecting patterns in historic sales data over a given period of time, and offers endless custom reporting metrics, so you can spot emerging trends not only with your acute business sense, but reliable inventory data.
Oral cosmetics brand Snow, whose transformative teeth whitening kits are endorsed by A-list celebs such as Kris Jenner, Chris Pratt and Ellen DeGeneres, has used Inventory Planner to reliably predict sales during unpredictable periods.
“When it comes to running a $100M e-commerce business, you really have to get planning and forecasting right to be able to balance cash flow and keep customers happy,” says Trevor Martin, Vice President Operations at Snow.
“At Snow we’ve had the classic problems of under purchasing and then running out of stock and upsetting customers. At one point, we were getting a bunch of one star reviews and customer service took a hit because the team had a huge backlog of tickets.
“We’ve also been at the other extreme where we’ve massively over-ordered and tied up too much cash in stock.
“Inventory Planner has changed all that. It’s packed with nuggets-of-gold features that have transformed our business.”
Cater to the diversity of wellness fans
Wellness is an all-encompassing term and means something different to everyone – so remember to harness the potential of different consumer groups and their preferences.
With the detailed inventory insights in Inventory Planner, you can identify buying trends based on geography, age group, income level and more. This way, you can purchase more of the items particular groups favour, and work in parallel with your marketing department to make sure the right customers are made aware of the products you know they’ll love.
There’s also huge potential for opening into international markets, as there’s clearly worldwide demand yet preference differs between countries; McKinsey found that respondents in Germany prioritize fitness, for example, while the USA loves mindfulness and the UK, nutrition.
If you do offer products internationally or open up warehouses overseas, there are international guidelines for different products to consider – so the best inventory planning technology should make it logistically easy. No matter how many country-specific shopfronts you run, with Inventory Planner it’s simple to add new warehouse locations to your inventory, seamlessly monitor multiple sets of inventory data and even move inventory between warehouse locations.
Release cash to invest in new and innovative products
Competition is fierce in the wellness industry, and going above and beyond expectations is integral to sticking in customers’ heads. Wellness revolves around what’s new and exciting – so keeping a dynamic, profitable inventory that boosts cash flow means you’ll always have the funds to invest in elite services for customers and to keep them interested with the latest, most innovative products.
Inventory Planner allows you to cut back on unnecessary items in the warehouse by laser-targeting top performing products and noting which slow-movers are trapping your cash, therefore could be pushed in marketing efforts or put on sale. As Kos discovered, stripping back your inventory in this way could result in significant extra funds.
US brand Kos, a multichannel retailer of vegan protein powder, had seen an incredible 2,100% year-on-year growth rate when it decided to streamline its inventory with Inventory Planner rather than use spreadsheets. With Inventory Planner’s powerful inventory insights, it was able to cut its holding stock in half and release around $1.5M to reinvest into company growth.
COO of Kos, Kevin Dalaeli says: “If your inventory has expiration dates, which ours does, the risk of excess stock is especially high. Many suppliers will only buy from us with an 18-month expiration date, so if we aren’t turning over our stock every six months, we’re in trouble.
“Like most brands, inventory is our biggest investment – and managing it well is critical for our cash flow. Inventory Planner ensures we get the balance just right.”
For wellness companies to compete in a crowded sector, success lies in customer loyalty – and that depends on expectations being fulfilled, time after time. Such high performance requires a slick inventory planning system that offers detailed, up-to-date insights and reliable forecasting so you’ll always know what, when and how much to purchase – even as the meaning of wellness evolves.
To see how Inventory Planner can supercharge performance for your wellness business, book a demo today.