A word of notepad file would not do the job either because they do not allow you to organize the information that you are working with. Unless you create a table within the word document but that does not have the capabilities for organization that the database would. Another option to organize information wold be the use of excel.
Excel lets you create files of information with many columns for storage but it does not let you do the same things that a database would. A database allows you to work with only one set of information at a time. If I wanted to see who was purchasing the clamp, I cold search them on the database and pull up their specific information. The clamp would benefit greatly from the use of a database.