Stocking in Anticipation of Book Shortages

You’ve probably heard that supply chain issues are slowing the production of books. Thanks to an outstanding team and lots of data-driven decisions, we’ve stocked our shelves. Hexagramm Books will NOT be facing a shortage - at least not yet! 😉

First Signs of Supply Issues

Books go out of print all of the time. In a typical year, about 20-50 titles out of our 6,000-strong collection go out of print. In 2020 and 2021, we saw hundreds of titles go out of print. In just two years, the number of titles in our collection was slashed by 10%. 

Side Note: No worries, we’re always adding new titles to our collections. So, the selection is still there.  

Also alarming was the transit time between the publisher warehouse, and our office. By spring 2021, books were taking much longer to make it to our shelves. We went from waiting an average of 3-4 weeks to 10-12 weeks. Our Operations Manager, Shannon Meyer, raised the alarm in May: our inventory levels were too low to meet demand. 

A Data-Driven Approach to Purchasing

With the help of Amina Al-Araji, our Supply Chain Manager, we developed a data-driven approach to purchasing. If the historic data showed that a particular title took a very long time to stock, we ordered that same title in much larger quantities. If a book was in high demand, we purchased in greater quantities. If a book was part of many collections, we stocked more.  

Take a look around our office! This is the work of Amina, Shannon and the whole Ops Team. It sure doesn’t look like there’s a book shortage! 

Latest Lists, Ready to Ship!

Teachers, we are ready to take your orders. We’ve put together Latest Lists that include only books we have in stock. In as little as 48 hours, you could be holding your order. We have 27,118 books in stock at this time - more than we have ever held - and boy are we happy about that!

A special thank you to Shannon and Amina for helping us increase our inventory to record levels in the middle of a pandemic! Woohoo!

Please let us know if you wish to place an order for your school or family.  

Happy ordering!
Rob