Re: Recommendation for inventory labels?
As much as I think the idea of barcoding or radio-barcoding every items sounds cool, it will not be practical for me in the real world: In times of many gigs in fewer days many items will often be repacked and redistributed to new trucks or trailers either in the lot outside the warehouse, or even worse - at the gigs.
I also have pages and pages of lists with item, make, model, serial #. Wherever there is no serial number this just gets written in the chart. Items of a certain value that I have many of (think monitor speakers, not mic stands) have a normal labelwriter-made sticker on them with a number on it, just beginning with #1 and ending with however many there are. The only purpose of this is to easily identify, make a mental note of and follow "rotten apples" with intermittent faults, etc, without looking up a long serial number nobody will remember for more than 15 seconds, anyway.
Items of a certain value that are small enough to pocket are engraved with company name or at least company initials. All mics travel to gigs in individual pouches of the same brand. Teardown time: Break out the pouches; empty pouch = go look for mic.
All items big enough to fit even a small sticker get a logo-sticker stuck to them.
Still, things can go missing from time to time. I guess you are never 100% safe. At least without making systems so cumbersome they cost more to implement than just taking the loss of a SM 57 or a few cables every blue moon.
