Profitable Product Mix For Your Vending Business

A good product mix will ensure that your vending business customers are satisfied and keep coming back for more. This is essential to make your vending business popular as well as profitable. If this task has been assigned to subordinates, you must check whether they are filling the machine with branded, fresh products that are currently in demand.

The “must-have” items need to be placed in the machine so that sales are continuous and maximized through a certain period of time. You must also ensure that products are rotated at periodic intervals so that a variety of products are offered to customers. This is known as ‘category management’ and needs proper attention for successful vending.

With the help of category management, product selection gets simplified at the route and warehouse level and allows the operator to control the machine menu. The company may have to tie up warehouse space as some of the products will turn only quarterly. This can lead to higher costs of operation. Category management can help Planet Antares vending operators in exercising cost control and resource mobilization.

On the other hand, some vending operators hesitate in using category management as this will require a separate technique of product selection as compared to the traditional product selection process. Previously, the products were selected on the basis of the route driver’s hunches but this suffers from the problem of costing the operators more in sales and profits.

By using Category Management, you are able to reduce costs and enhance the profit earning capacity of your Antares vending business. With this technique of product mix selection, you can reap several benefits and save immensely. There are three main areas where such savings can be made, as follows:

• Lesser investment of funds in inventory as there is reduction in the number of stock keeping units in the warehouse.
• As a result, there will be higher efficiency and productivity in performance of route drivers and warehouse labor.
• When product mix becomes effective, there will surely be higher sales and profitability from different locations.

The trick is to choose the fastest selling products for your vending machines. Once you have filled your vending machines with bestsellers, you can expect higher sales for your Antares vending business. This will also help in reducing the investment in inventory through faster, fewer products. Usually, you can achieve a 40% reduction in inventory by using category management.

When you implement such a system and handle lesser number of products efficiently, it will mean fewer inventories and lesser instances of error. There will be higher economies of scale and you will be able to reach sales and return targets within lesser time.