During my first warehouse tour, I was embarrassed to learn something "normal"

This time, I will write down what I learned and felt when I toured a client's warehouse the other day.

Conclusion: This is what I learned (felt)

• Of course, there are people in the warehouse who do picking, packing, and shipping.
• Inventory management is more complicated and troublesome than I thought.
• There are essential analog tasks that cannot be handled by IT.
• Setting up Shopify is easy, but linking with a warehouse is often not.
• It's important to know Shopify, but first you need to know EC.

It's like a social studies field trip for students, but I'll look back at each one.

Of course, there are people in the warehouse who do picking, packing, and shipping.

It's completely obvious, but there are people who pick, pack, and ship the products ordered through e-commerce.

However, there are surprisingly many people who are not aware of this.

“A customer instantly bought a product on EC! Yay!”
There must be some Shopify builders who have finished with

While looking at the order list, we search for the product from the large amount of inventory in the warehouse, check that there are no mistakes in the order details and the product, and then pack it in cardboard boxes...

I think something will change just by being aware that there are people who take pride in shipping the product, from the time the order is placed until the product reaches the customer.

Thank you to everyone at the warehouse📦

Inventory management is more complicated and troublesome than I thought.

I realized that inventory management is more difficult than I thought.

If you only look at the inventory on Shopify, you might end up having a narrow view of things, thinking, ``When someone makes a purchase, the inventory automatically decreases, and is there some kind of trouble?''

Of course, in addition to EC, we also need to properly manage inventory other than Shopify, such as wholesale inventory and spare inventory for returns and exchanges, and I think it would be great if stores and malls were added to this,...

Also, there are still many places that accept wholesale orders by phone, email, or fax, so I would like to thank those who manage inventory for their daily work 🙇‍♂️

There are essential analog tasks that cannot be handled by IT.

During the warehouse tour, I helped out with the inventory work, and I realized once again that analog work is simple but essential.

I had to check the lot numbers and stock quantities of each product one by one, write them down on paper, and then input them into Excel, which I was not used to and quite tiring.

Personally, I tend to think, ``Isn't it possible to make things more efficient and easier with digital methods?'', but I learned that inventory can only be counted in an analog way.

I'm grateful that someone does this manually, even once a year.

Setting up Shopify is easy, but linking with a warehouse is often not.

For example, if you want to be able to specify the date and time in EC, all you have to do with Shopify is install the app.

However, I realized that I needed to consider various things, such as, ``Can the warehouse system read the date and time specification information reflected in the order information?Will it put a burden on the warehouse staff?''

How can we reflect the content in the order information, such as gift wrapping and bundled items measures, to reduce warehouse errors and burdens?
I think it's important to be aware that in Shopify, even if it can be solved with an app, there are many cases where it is not easy to realize it due to cooperation with the warehouse.

It's important to know Shopify, but first you need to know EC.

It's important to learn more about Shopify, but first you need to learn more about e-commerce as a whole.

"It's OK as long as you can access the e-commerce site, put the product in your cart, and make the payment."
I don't think anyone will be happy if we treat Shopify with this "website" mindset.

EC really has a lot to do and I think it's tough, but personally, that's what makes it so interesting.

I would like to continue learning about EC, not just Shopify.