There are many challenges store owners in the trading card game industry face. One of the most common is managing inventory. With prices always changing and new products always coming out, it makes it hard to know exactly how much inventory store owners should be carrying at one time, and whether they should be listing online or in store. With all of this to consider, we wanted to give you a few factors that all store owners should consider before deciding how much inventory to list online, and how much to carry in store.

Store owners first need to look at the size of their allocations. In today’s market, it can be very challenging to get the same size allocations that store owners have been able to get in the past. The amount of inventory store owners list online versus in store should directly correlate with the size and frequency of their allocations.

Next, we look at stale product. All store owners come across stale product, most commonly when new sets are released, or a single gets banned from certain formats of play. The audience willing to purchase a product once it becomes stale is much smaller and can make it very challenging to sell in store because only a small percentage of your local customer base will be willing to purchase it. Listing most of your stale product online is the most effective way to still make a profit. With how large your audience is online compared to in store, listing the product online will reach a much wider range of customers and still allow you to sell it for a profit.

The last thing for store owners to consider when managing their inventory is hot product. Hot products will hit different parts of the market at different times, which affects the price and demand for that product for each store owner. If the demand and price point in your store’s local market is not as high as online, then most of that product that you have in your inventory should be listed online. Your profit margins will be much higher since the demand is not high in your area yet, and store owners will profit much better from the online sales. Store owners need to be careful here though, because as soon as the demand is high in your local area, the price point will go up and your profit margin will be much higher in store than online.