Managing Stock Levels and Timing Reorders

Reorder against your lead time, not your shelf. Production runs around 10–15 working days from artwork approval for screen printing and embroidery, plus 2–5 working days tracked UK delivery — so a reorder placed when you notice stock is low arrives roughly three weeks later.

The Invisible Cost

A stockout on a best seller does not appear anywhere in your accounts. There is no line item for the customers who arrived, found their size unavailable, and left. That is precisely what makes it dangerous — it is the most expensive thing that happens to small clothing brands and the one they are least likely to notice. Meanwhile the design that is not selling sits fully stocked, absorbing capital.

Working Out Your Reorder Point

The logic is simple and worth doing explicitly.

• Establish how many of a given size you sell in a typical week.
• Multiply by the number of weeks your reorder takes — roughly three, allowing for production and delivery.
• Add a buffer for the proofing stage and for demand being higher than average.
• That total is the stock level at which you place the reorder, not the level at which you start thinking about it.

Track by Size, Not by Product

Aggregate stock figures conceal the problem. A product showing forty units in stock sounds healthy until you discover thirty-five of them are extra-small and extra-large, and the sizes people actually buy ran out last week. Effectively you are out of stock while your records say otherwise. Tracking at size level is the only way to see this, and it is also what tells you how to weight the next order's spread.

“"Forty units in stock and none in medium is not forty units in stock."”

Balancing Cash Against Discount

Bulk discounts reach up to around 35% as quantities rise, which creates constant pressure to order more. That pressure is legitimate — a lower unit cost genuinely improves margin — but it competes with cash flow and storage. The discipline is to let sales history determine the quantity rather than the discount curve. A better unit price on stock that sits for a year is not a saving; it is capital converted into boxes.

Consolidate Where You Can

If several products need reordering within a similar period, ordering them together lifts the combined quantity and lands better on the discount curve than separate runs, each of which pays its own setup. The 50-piece minimum applies per order with mixed sizes allowed, so combining products into one run is usually both cheaper and administratively simpler. Model the combined order in the free instant price calculator before splitting it.

Keep the Specification Stable

Reorders only work as reorders if they reproduce the original. Record garment codes, colours, logo dimensions, placement and thread references so a repeat order matches rather than approximates — customers who already own the first version are the ones who will notice a difference. Preview any deliberate changes in the free Design Studio before approving.