does MS Access do inventory and customer management?

I'm looking for an alternative to QB that I can use in my home business.  I have up to 10 different inventory items at a time plus materials to make more.

I need to track inventory, customers (I sell mostly wholesale), material purchases, sales, and whatever else I need to track.

Any ideas if Access can do all this?

If so, is there some easy way to learn all this?

MS sure does that.
Use form to enter the data or just directly into the table or to a linked excel spreadsheet
You can use reports/query to view things or a linked excel spreadsheet.

You will have to setup the tables and the relationships with the tables.

There is a template called Northwind, when you open access it has everything that you described already setup.
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/featured-access-templates-e14f25e4-78b6-41de-8278-1afcfc91a9cb?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US
https://omextemplates.content.office.net/support/templates/en-us/tf01228997.accdt

MS Access is a great "programmable" database.  It can do what you need but it must be set up for your particular purpose.