Amber:

Welcome to Episode 7 of the Gem Finders Podcast. I’m Amber.

Shaun:

I’m Shaun.

Amber:

Today, we’re discussing one of our most asked questions, and that is how we manage our inventory. It’s taken us a while to get into a rhythm and find a system. And the system that we use definitely isn’t perfect, but it’s what works for us right now.

So we’re going to share it, talk about it, and go over the pros and cons. Just know—it does have its faults, and it’s just us doing the best we can with the resources we have. That’s something we’ve really leaned into overall in this business: we just do what we can, and then we always strive to keep improving and getting better and getting more efficient.

Shaun:

Yeah, it has its flaws. It’s probably more complicated than it needs to be, because we do use two different programs. But it works for us, and we’ll share how and why we use it.

Amber:

If you’re thinking about reselling, or if you just have any kind of retail business, managing your inventory is so important for a number of reasons. One—you need to stay organized. Especially if you’re selling across multiple platforms or on your own website, and on social media, and on marketplace platforms. You have to stay organized, because there is nothing worse than selling something and not being able to find it—or not knowing if you’ve already sold it. You want to avoid that at all costs.

Plus, it’s really important to be able to look at the data you’re collecting, so the price points you’re buying items at, how well they’ve sold—things that can help you not only get an idea of where your business is at, but also help you make better purchasing decisions when you’re sourcing in the future. So there are a number of reasons why an inventory system is important.

We couldn’t do this without it. Like—there’s no way. We are sourcing hundreds and hundreds of items a month. We’re selling hundreds of items a month. We really need this to stay on track. And because there’s two of us working on the system—he does certain things, I do certain things—it’s key, especially when you have two or more people, to be able to be on the same page.

Shaun:

It’s also especially important for this type of business because we’re not purchasing items in bulk and selling bulk items. Every piece is unique, so we have to input and document the flaws and condition of every single piece. So it’s really important for us to have an inventory system that is at least manageable.

Like we said, it’s not the best. It’s not my favorite. I think we could find better alternatives in the future.

Amber:

For more money, haha

Shaun:

But, it works for now. And we literally could not run this business without it.

Amber:

So we’re going to tell you exactly what we use and go over the pros and cons.

Also—we just launched our Patreon community!

We have a free access level, and then some other levels that you can pay for depending on what kind of content you want from us.

On that reseller level, we’ve posted a video that shows you our screens and a behind-the-scenes look at how we go through this process, as well as a template you can copy exactly what we use. You can use that to start, then build and adjust it based on your business’s needs. That’s a resource that’s available now, and we’re really excited. We just launched the Patreon and hope it’s helpful for all of you, and that we can share more of our knowledge in that community.

Shaun:

This is a new journey for us—we don’t really know how to navigate it or what kind of content we should post. So if you have any suggestions or ideas for what you’d like to see on that page, please let us know in the comments. It would be very useful for us to have that information.

Amber:

We’ve spent months trying to figure out where we could host the Gem Finders community. And after doing lots of research, we think this is going to be the best platform. And like I said, there is a free level, and then you can pay depending on how involved you want the content to be and what kind of content you're looking for.

So let's get back into inventory managing.

Shaun:

Yeah, we've had lots of requests for how we manage our inventory and what systems we use. That’s a very common question that we get asked.

Amber:

Before we get into our specific system, I think it’s important to acknowledge that inventory management should start at the time that you're antiquing.

And we always say that these are things we should do—and we never do them. But— 

Shaun: 

Occasionally

Amber:

Occasionally. If you have the ability, I would highly recommend doing these steps before you even get your inventory home. When you're at antique stores, thrift stores, wherever you're sourcing—flea markets, wherever it may be—I would really recommend that you take photos of every item you're going to buy.

And also the price tag and any signs that say if there’s a sale.

We have had so many situations where we’ve come home and there’s either an item missing on the receipt, or there’s an item that we were double charged for, or something was a pair and we were charged for each of them, or we didn’t remember how much we paid for it—and we realized that the receipt isn’t broken up. They just charged us $200 for “glassware,” and it’s not itemized. There have been so many situations where we really regretted not documenting that information in real time.

Now like I said, we don’t always do this—and we should. But you should.

Shaun:

Not only for inventory purposes—it’s also a good idea just to make sure you’re getting charged what you’re supposed to be charged at these stores. It’s just good for your business overall. I try to stay on top of it. I’m not very good at it. Occasionally I’ll be in the zone and I’ll be like, “We need to remember to take pictures and get on top of this stuff.” But we mentioned in the last episode how, when you go into these antique and thrift stores, there’s so much to focus on that you kind of lose track of any extra things you need to be doing.

This feels like one of those extra things that sometimes just slips our minds—and we always regret it later. Because we get these receipts home and we’re trying to figure out what is what on the receipt. Sometimes, like she said, it just says “glassware,” or sometimes the descriptions are so vague that you’re like, “What does that even mean? What is that supposed to be?”

Amber:

We’re like, “What did we buy for $4?”

Shaun:

Yeah. So it saves you a lot of time in the long run—a lot of time, a lot of headaches, a lot of frustration. It is absolutely in your best interest to do this while you’re at the store.

Amber:

And some stores don’t give receipts. Or if you’re at a flea market, or a garage sale, a yard sale, an estate sale—when you’re doing those things, you can still take photos. And then when you get in your car, just write down everything that’s in your head like, “$10 for this, $15 for this.” Write down what you paid so that you have a record later.

Because not only do you need that for inventory—you also need that for taxes. We really need to do better. But make sure you’re doing better than we are.

I do think about it, but I’m normally also posting things on social media while we’re at the store, and I just feel like I can’t do one more thing.

Shaun:

There’s a lot to think about while you’re sourcing.

Amber:

Especially if you’re doing this as a business.

So once we get the inventory—once we’ve had a sourcing day and get it all home—it just sits in our living room. 

Shaun:

We do not have a good place to store all of our inventory. We have these shelves back here, and there’s a little bit of space in this office. But aside from that, we have way more inventory than there is space in this room.

Amber:

The shelves behind us are all the items that are already listed. Then we have the items that haven’t been listed yet—all in our living room.

One of the reasons we keep them in there is because we’ve started to do these “Unpack and Chat” lives. Since we need to unpack things anyway, we just unpack them on a live sale and allow people to claim them early—which is working out really well for us.

But it does mean we couldn’t even store things if we wanted to, because we keep them in the boxes to be able to unwrap them with our customers.

Shaun:

It’s part of the strategy right now. I think it’ll stick around for the foreseeable future because of the success we’ve had with it. It solves problems while creating more. It solves the problem of having fewer steps to get something sold—but again, it has to sit in our living room. Sometimes for over a month. Some of the stuff that’s in there now has been in there for over a month.

Amber:

Really, truly. 

Shaun:

It definitely has its pros and cons.

Amber:

Yeah, and I wish we had more areas where we could store these items, but we really can’t—unless we wanted to bring them up and down the stairs to the basement. And that just doesn’t seem realistic right now, especially with how often we need to access our inventory—both listed and fresh inventory.

So, it sits in our living room. And then when we do our “Unpack and Chat” live, after that I group the items based on the stores they’re from. We like to keep them together so that we can inventory them together.

So, I group them by the different stops, and then when Shaun is ready, he goes through and inventories all of them into...

Shaun:

Shopify and Airtable. Those are the two primary tools we use to track and manage our inventory.

Amber:

We’ll link them both below on YouTube if you’re watching this there.

Shaun:

Yes. And as I mentioned—not the most ideal situation to have two systems we’re working with. But after doing a lot of research and trial and error, we’ve found that for now, and for at least a year now, this has been the most effective way for us to manage our inventory.

It takes a while, because I am inputting these items into two different systems. But they each serve a purpose—that’s why we use both.

Amber:

In an ideal situation, I think we would have everything in Shopify. But we’re just using the bare bones of Shopify right now—we don’t have any plugins installed for this right now. There are some out there, but you have to pay for them. And I’m overwhelmed by the options. I don’t even know where to start if I were to pick a Shopify plugin. So… we just haven’t. But just the regular Shopify without any plugins, the inventory management is limited.

So originally, that was the plan—was to switch from Airtable to Shopify. But once we started to get everything in there, we realized that Shopify doesn’t have a place for all of the information that we would like to be able to have attached to each item in our inventory.

So we decided to keep Airtable. That way, we can keep track of some more fields—like where the item was purchased from, what the item sold for, what the item was listed at—things like that.

If you're not familiar with Airtable, it's like a fancier version of a spreadsheet. So it has some more functionality. I really like that I can look at it in different views. So I can look at what’s sold, I can look at what’s active, I can look at what’s new. I like being able to filter based off of the task that I’m doing and what I am able to see.

And I also—my brain likes the way that it's organized and the way that it's laid out. I feel like it’s much easier to digest the information in Airtable compared to a regular spreadsheet.

We use Airtable because it has the most amount of data and for how flexible it is. I can make a column for literally anything that I wanted to keep track of—any information I would like to have in the future.

I think it's really helpful because I will have the price that I originally listed the item at, and then I will also have the price that it sold at. So I can tell if it sold for the asking price, or if it sat around for a while and sold a few weeks or months later.

I also have the date it was listed, and then the date that it sold. So there’s a lot of little details that I think are really helpful—especially every, you know, month or quarter whenever I go in and I’m trying to analyze what’s going well and what’s going not so well. It’s very helpful to have that data and that information.

And I don’t think that the way we currently have Shopify set up—without any additional plugins—I don’t believe that there’s any way that we would be able to track all of that information.

Shaun:

Yeah, I think that Shopify is a great site to use if you are setting up any kind of shop. I just don’t think that it is necessarily designed for resellers and the type of business that we have.

Amber:

Yes, and that is another problem that we run into—is that most businesses that require inventory management, it’s not inventory management like this.

Reselling comes with a certain set of problems that other businesses don’t have to face. So when you’re reselling, we’re not buying things in bulk. We have one of the item most of the time. 99% of the time we only have one. Occasionally we have multiples, but for the most part, we’re just dealing with a single item.

And even if we find that item again, the measurements could be different, the color could be different, the flaws could be different, the condition could be different. Where we got it from was probably different—and that makes the price that we bought it for probably different.

So we have to take into consideration all of these different variables when we're tracking our inventory.

And we can’t just put that we have two of them in inventory without adjusting for that. Otherwise all of the numbers and all of the analytics—at the end of the day, at the end of the quarter, at the end of the year—will be off.

And plus, we have to have images for each item. Even if we have it again, we need new images—we need fresh images—because the item might look a little bit different or might have different flaws. So reselling really does create some very specific challenges that Shopify in and of itself is not equipped to handle.

Now, we still deal with some of them even though we’re inventorying in two places. But I do feel like you kind of worked around some of those issues.

Shaun:

Yeah, we’ve had to do some trial and error and do things unconventionally. I think that we use Shopify in ways that it’s not designed to be used necessarily in some aspects, but we’ve made it work for our business—even though it’s not necessarily designed to do the functions that we have it doing. But sometimes, that’s what you have to do.

You just have to make things work sometimes. Sometimes, it’s impossible to find something that is set up that’s exactly right for you—that’s perfect for your business—and you just have to find ways to make it work.

Amber:

Especially on your budget. Like I don’t doubt that we could probably find an inventory management system that would solve more of these issues. But I don’t know that it’s somewhere where we want to put our money at this moment.

Shaun:

You really have to weigh how much you’re spending in every area of the business because we have so many expenses as it is, and we are already paying for both Airtable and Shopify. It’s not like they’re free—the versions that we’re using, we’re already paying for those—and they would ultimately be cheaper than, I think, if we found something else that might fit all of the needs that we have for this business.

Amber:

Yeah, and it’s really hard because I don’t even know of anybody that I could ask. Like, I don’t know of, like, an expert on Shopify for resellers who could help me with that question.

I feel like we’re kind of on the forefront of navigating this—and that’s not to say that there’s not other resellers using Shopify—but I feel like I haven’t talked to anybody who has a great solution. So this is just the best that we have been able to come up with at this point in time.

So we have Airtable, which is kind of like a spreadsheet, and then Shopify is especially important once the items are live. Because then, once somebody purchases it, it’s off of Shopify and that inventory number, you know, gets deducted. And that way nobody else can purchase the item.

So I think that’s really helpful in Shopify—and the fact that we did set up our own website—that people can see what’s available and what’s not, and then it also immediately deducts it from the inventory on Shopify.

So Shaun does all of the inventory when the items are incoming. And then once the item sells, or if I send an invoice for the item, then I go into Airtable and I will change the status that I have from active to open order. And then I’ll also take a moment to list what the item sold at and what platform it sold on—so did it sell directly on the website, did it sell on Instagram. I’m not really listing on the marketplace platforms anymore, but I used to be able to track if something sold on eBay or one of the other platforms.

And then once the item is shipped, I also go in and mark the ship date. I change the status from open to sold. And then it gets filtered out of all of the active listings so that I know the item is no longer available.

Shaun:

If you can’t tell—we like to have as much data as we possibly can about all of the items that we purchase and sell. It helps us in the future. It helps us in the present. It lets us know what we should bring to the shop again in the future—what we shouldn’t bring back to the shop.

There’s a lot of data that can be collected in Airtable that we can’t necessarily track as much as we would like to in Shopify. Don’t get me wrong—there are a ton of analytics and reports that you can pull from Shopify. But I feel like most of them are just slightly off from what we would like them to show.

That’s where Airtable really helps—is that we can really customize that data and manipulate it in the way that we want it to show us what we need to see.

Amber:

Exactly. They both give snapshots of different things and different perspectives of the data. And I think it’s very helpful to be able to have both of them on hand at my fingertips so that we can determine what choices are the best for the business.

Because a lot of this is very in real time. Like, I’m looking at what we’ve sold to determine how much I can spend on inventory. And I’m looking at what we’ve sold so far this month to determine if I want to run any sales to help us hit our goals.

All of that data is so important in the business’s growth and also in being able to make sure that we have enough income coming in to be able to pay both of us for our time—because this is our career and our job.

So, I like having it in both places.

I know it’s probably difficult not to be able to see this in real time, so that is one of the reasons why we made that Patreon video that shows the back end—so that you can really see how we have Airtable set up and then also how we do a listing in Shopify.

So, once the items are in inventory—once they have all been documented with where they came from and what date we bought them from—then Shaun cleans them.

And this is another part of the process where it’s not perfect and we do run into some issues. Because when Shaun is inventorying, that is when he’s documenting all of the flaws and the condition of the items.

And then when he cleans them, sometimes those flaws no longer matter—because he has been able to clean off all of the cloudiness or all of the marks and things like that.

But at the same time, It also doesn’t make sense for us to clean the items and then inventory them, because we need them to be in the piles and organized with the other items from that stop. So we’re sharing the order that we do things in—but again, it’s not perfect and it has its flaws.

Shaun:

Yeah, ideally it would be great to buy the items, bring them into the house, and clean them right away. But with the way that we have our system set up right now, that doesn’t make sense for us.

So, as Amber mentioned, a lot of the time when I’m inventorying, I do mark some flaws that I’m able to resolve in the cleaning process. So that is an issue. At the same time, I’ve been doing this for quite a while now, so most of the time I have a really good idea of what I’m going to be able to clean off and what I probably won’t be able to resolve. So, I do kind of take that into account when I’m doing inventory.

But again—it’s not ideal. I wish that we could just clean the items first and then inventory them. It would make so much more sense. But, we have a system in place right now that is working for us, and it doesn’t feel like the right time to change that system.

Amber:

And this is challenging because we are bringing in so many items every month. We are keeping track of so many items—just the two of us. And so once something is kind of out of the pile of where it came from, it’s very difficult to remember where it came from, what stop it was from, what date we got it on—if that information is not already in inventory.

So if we didn’t do things this way, it would get very complicated very quickly. We’re kind of stuck right now—but it still does work. And I would rather there be more potential flaws listed that actually aren’t there than the other way around.

Shaun:

Not from a customer’s standpoint—I would rather them see less flaws when they’re looking at the items because that would scare them.

Amber:

But, I would rather it say “potential minor cloudiness” and then them get it and there be no cloudiness. I do see what you’re saying—that it could maybe deter their purchasing decision. It’s also very hard for me to go back in and adjust the inventory.

And sometimes during our live sales, I’ll notice that like—oh, it says cloudiness and there’s no cloudiness. And I will take a moment to adjust that. It’s just one of those areas that just is not perfect right now—that we are continuing to adjust and work on.

Shaun:

So, when I’m inventorying the items, I don’t always know what the patterns or what the names of these items really are. So, I will just give a general description based on what I think it looks like.

Amber:

—and sometimes they’re very off and very funny, haha.

Shaun:

But, that leads to an issue whenever she goes in and she is getting ready to list the items. She will change the title to what it’s supposed to be. So, for me to go back in and change the flaws, I often don’t know what I’m looking for at that point—because the title has changed. I don’t have nearly as much knowledge about these items as she does. I’m always learning, but she knows way more than I do.

So, that’s another tiny flaw with the way that we manage our inventory right now. And I don’t think that Shopify helps that with the way that it sorts the items. I feel like it’s really difficult to find what you’re looking for in your inventory in Shopify.

Amber:

I agree. And even when I’m going through and trying to find the items after you’ve inventoried them, I usually have to find the name in Airtable and then copy and paste it to figure out exactly what the item is.

Because of the way that things pull up in Shopify, it does make things difficult to find—especially when you’re dealing with such a vast amount of items. So it’s an area where I’m glad that we have two different systems, because it helps us be on the same page. It helps me make sure that I’m editing and listing the correct item.

And a lot of the time, it is the place that it was purchased from and the date that really helps ensure that I’m looking at the right item—and that data is not in Shopify. I need to check it with Airtable.

So, after the items are cleaned, they again chill in our living room for some time. And I start pulling them for collections—sometimes it is live sale collections, sometimes it is website collections. I pull them for different collections, and that’s the part where I photograph them.

And I do use a professional Canon camera. I don’t use my iPhone because I really like a sharp, crisp photo. And I used to do a lot of photography before this—and I loved it. And I will say that having to photograph this many items has really taken a lot of the fun out of it. Because I feel like I can’t style and really highlight each item the way that I would like to. I wish I had time to give each and every item its justice and its moment to shine, and I wish I could style them all on pretty surfaces—but I don’t have that kind of time.

We don’t have enough styleable surfaces in our home, and that’s been really hard. That I’m doing something that I love, but I don’t get to tap into the creative side as much as I would like because of our current setup and because of how many items we’re currently moving in and out each week.

But I will say that people do comment on the quality of our photos often, and I do think that it helps. I don’t think that you absolutely need a fancy camera to have success at reselling. For many years, I just used an iPhone. But at this stage, I do think it helps our business.

Shaun:

Yeah, you’re very particular about how you want the photos to look. If it was up to me, I would say use an iPhone every time. It would save so much time in this process. Because she does take them on a professional camera, and then she has to put the SD card in the laptop, and then she has to edit them on the laptop—and it is a process.

I feel like, even though we do get compliments on our photos, I don’t think that we would lose sales if we took a picture on the iPhone and didn’t even really edit it and put it on the website.

Amber:

But the lighting isn’t as good. The colors aren’t as true.

Shaun:

But the pieces speak for themselves.

Amber:

I don’t know—I really like to have aesthetically pleasing photos, even if they aren’t as fancy as I would like them to be.

Shaun:

She is a very stubborn person. And when she wants to do something a certain way, she will do it that way—and nobody can tell her otherwise.

Amber:

And this—I’m telling you right now—that doing this wastes so much of my time. Because we bought our last MacBooks when they came out with the M1 chip.

And when we bought them, they promised that things like Lightroom and Photoshop were going to be faster in the near future. And that has not proven to be the case. They were like, Lightroom is going to be slow for now and then it will continuously be updated to this chip. I’m probably not explaining it right.

And then, you know, in a few months or a year, speed won’t matter. So I committed to this laptop thinking that it was gonna continuously improve. And it goes so slow—Lightroom goes so slow. I have to wait so long between each image for it to get itself together enough for me to move on to the next one.

This is a huge headache in my day right now—is how long Lightroom takes and how long it takes to import the images from the SD card into Lightroom. So, I am hoping that I can purchase a new laptop in the near future. Because I got like the bottom tier—we didn’t get anything fancy.

Then, once the item is photographed and I import the images in, that’s when I go in and edit the inventory listing. So, I normally leave Airtable alone—that way if Shaun needs to find the listing again, he knows what he put it as. And I normally edit the Shopify listing.

I will put the brand, I’ll put the pattern, I’ll put any information that I know. This is when I’ll also do some research and try to find some more information—or I will try to fact-check any information that I’m not sure about.

If I’m not sure, I leave it out of the listing or I put “believed to be.” I really make an effort not to put anything in the listings that I can’t confirm or that I am not sure if it’s true or not.

And that’s also when I price the items. So you can head to Episode 4 where we detail how we price the items—the thought process that I go through—and that episode will really give you some more insight onto pricing.

That’s where I kind of make that second batch of adjusting to the listings that Shaun was talking about earlier. And then from there, it just sits in Shopify until it’s ready to officially be listed.

At this point, the items have moved from the living room to our dining room. And then once they’re officially listed, then they go on these shelves. So, not only do we have a lot of movement happening on the back end—but the item also makes its way all around the house, depending on where we’re at in the inventory managing process. And then once it’s sold, it gets pulled off the shelves. It goes into the kitchen—where sometimes it comes back into the office and sits in a box until it’s ready to be wrapped. And then it is wrapped—and then it goes and sits back out in the kitchen. This sounds so ridiculous now that we’re saying this out loud.

Shaun:

It is wrapped in the living room as well. And then it is packed in the box in the dining room. So all of the rooms in our house are used for this business—for the most part.

Amber: 

They really are. The item takes quite a journey. From the time it comes into our front door.

Shaun:

Yeah, we need a more dedicated space.

Amber:

We do. But I will say—the fact that we have a small house with very limited storage and very limited space is all the more reason that these inventory steps are so important. So, if you’re running a reselling business out of your house, you have to prioritize having a system. Because I can’t imagine, if we didn’t have a system that was as detailed, trying to keep track of everything throughout that whole process. We would lose our minds.

So, I did mention this a little bit when we were talking about how we update both Shopify and Airtable—but once the item is packed and wrapped, and once it is labeled, I do go in and I adjust it. Shopify is already adjusted when the item is purchased. And then I go through and reflect those changes in Airtable.

So, I am going in and out of Shopify and Airtable quite a few times throughout the process—from when an item is being listed all the way to when it’s being sold. And like we’ve talked about a lot in this episode, it is a pain in the butt to go through having both of them updated and the extra steps it takes to adjust them—but it really is worth it because of all of the data that I have at my fingertips, which drives so many of the decisions that we have to make daily.

Shaun:

We direct all of our sales through Shopify now. All of the sales are made through Shopify. But, we do have live sales—and during those live sales, I set up a spreadsheet where I document the—

Amber:

Third tool.

Shaun:

So yeah, we do use Google Sheets as well during our live sales. I’ll set up a spreadsheet and I will document who made the purchase, what the item was, how much it sold for—all of that stuff.

And then Amber will send invoices, which are paid through Shopify. But that’s just another small step along the inventory process, where we have to keep track of those sales during a live sale in real time. Otherwise, we’ll miss something—we’ll get lost in the process. So, it’s never-ending. And then after an item is paid for and I wrap the items—and then Amber’s the one who packs them in the boxes—because we’re passing from one person to another, I will label all of the items after I pack them so that she’s able to check that the right items are in all the boxes.

So, it’s just another step along the way to assure that we are keeping track of these pieces the entire way before they make it to the customer.

Amber:

Yeah, there are lots of checks and balances in place here to make sure that everything stays organized—and like Shaun said, that everything goes to the right customer. Because that is like my worst nightmare—is swapping out an item and the wrong person getting the wrong thing. I think about that all the time.

I’ll even double check the labels when there’s a pile of boxes here and make sure that the right label is on the right box. Like my anxiety will just be like, “Are you sure?” And I have to double check—because I want to prevent that at all costs.

And another important thing is—all of our items that are listed are actively on the website. So, if they’re sold during a live sale, once that item is claimed, I very quickly will add it to an invoice. I won’t send the invoice—I’ll do that step after—but I very quickly add it to an invoice and reserve it for that customer.

Otherwise, anybody who went on the website at that moment could take that item. And since it was just claimed but isn’t paid for yet, I always want to make sure that that change is reflected on the website in real time. So that’s another thing to consider if you’re using Shopify and you’re doing live sales.

And one thing I think is important to close on is that we just started using Shopify about a year ago. And before that, I was using PayPal exclusively. So you can still implement this system—or whatever pieces make sense for you—if you’re using PayPal. Because we had Airtable set up at that time. It is how we’ve been documenting and tracking our inventory for years.

And if you’re using PayPal, then you can just use Airtable or a spreadsheet. You don’t have to do Shopify and Airtable—because Airtable would serve for all of your inventory purposes. So, even if you are a couple steps behind this and you don’t have a website yet, Airtable is a fantastic tool, and it really helps to keep things organized.

Shaun:

Yeah, we thought that when we set up the website that we would just be able to do everything through Shopify—but that did not prove to be the case.

Amber:

And Airtable you can set up in so many different ways, with so many different views, and you can customize it depending on how you need to use it.

And that can be a little bit overwhelming at first, but I promise you—if you just kind of dedicate the time to learn it, you could probably use it for other things in your business too, not just inventory management.

Because it’s not necessarily an inventory management program—but it really is worth it. Because like I said, I really like how it lays out things visually, and I find that perspective to be very helpful throughout many steps of this process.

Shaun:

Alright—so we know that this was probably a lot of information to digest. So please hop over to the Patreon page.

Please support us—we need it. We need to know that this is gonna work.

Amber:

I hate pushing anything.

If you wanna come join us, we have more detailed information on there, but we push out lots of free content too that I hope is very helpful.

Shaun:

Remember how I mentioned that she’s the worst salesperson? We’re trying to find ways to make this Patreon page beneficial—and to bring this community together.

Because we have had a lot of requests for a Gem Finders community. So we’re hoping that this is the solution to that—that this can bring together customers, resellers, people who are just interested in vintage glassware, brass, stone pieces in general. We’re just trying to make this a community that can serve everybody.

So if this is the kind of information that you’re interested in, please head over to the Patreon page. It will be linked in the description—and we have a full video breakdown showing how we manage our inventory in Shopify and Airtable.

And we will also have links to an Airtable template that you will be able to use. I think they will be great resources if this is something that you are struggling with—if you don’t even know where to start with managing inventory.

I think that this will be a great place for you to begin. Like we said—it’s not the best system. We’re not gonna tell you that this is absolutely what you should be doing.

But I do think that it’s a great place to start if you are just kind of dipping your toes in the water with this.

Amber:

Yeah, and it took me years to get the Airtable sheet to a point that I felt that it did everything I needed it to.

So I’m saving you those steps by providing you my template. Because when you go in, there are so many different options and so many different things that you can do with Airtable—this takes all of that guesswork out of it for you.

But you can totally do this on your own if you just want explore Airtable. But if you are ready to jump in with a sheet that is already formatted, then that Patreon link will be for you.

Shaun:

Well, I hope you found some of this information valuable.

Amber:

And, let’s go find some vintage!