One of the mostly desired newer features in our E-Commerce themes was the “Inventory-Control” or also called “Stock-Control”. Since the feature is available for some time now in the ClothesShop, TheFurnitureStore, JewleryShop etc. should you automatically always use it?
It actually depends on the nature of your products; on their uniqueness.

When to use it
Lets say you sell items of artists. Every item is absolutely unique – should you use the inventory control? Yes, definitely. Just imagine you have only 1 item of a kind and suddenly 10 customers order it. Then you need to tell 9 people that “you are very sorry, but that item is sold out”. This in return will trigger the question, why you offer items online which are actually sold out.

Bottom line: if it is very hard for you to get the offered item delivered again or if the article is absolutely unique, then you should use the “Inventory control”.

When not to use it
On the other hand if you sell items which you as merchant can easily reorder for yourself – why actually use the “Inventory control”? Let’s not forget that a message like “SOLD OUT – we are terribly sorry and repent…” is always a small disappointment for your user. It could very well be that he or she will surf to another web shop with similar items.

Bottom line again: if you have no real trouble to re-organize your items, don’t interrupt the sales flow unnecessarily. In this case its better to inform the user that the delivery time is e.g. “5-7 days”. If you really run out of the article you can get the article within lets say 3 days which still gives you enough time to deliver in the other 2-4 days.

Digital goods: if you sell digital goods you will most likely not need the Inventory control either. A digital good is normally a copy of your item in the directory ‘masterdata’ – there is no limit whatsoever for the availability of them.