Reordering: The Rhythm That Separates Year Two From Year One
By The Velocity Wear Team
Reordering is not a decision, it is a rhythm, and brands that treat it as a decision are permanently either out of stock or over-stocked. The fix is arithmetic rather than instinct, and it is arithmetic you can do on the back of an envelope once you know which three numbers to put in it.
The reorder point
Your reorder point is the stock level at which you have to place the next order to avoid running out. It is your daily sales rate multiplied by your total lead time, plus a safety buffer.
Total lead time is the number people underestimate. It is not just production. It is the time to finalise anything that needs finalising, plus 10 to 15 working days of production from artwork approval, plus freight, plus customs, plus receiving. For a US brand importing, that whole chain is realistically several weeks even when nothing goes wrong.
So if you sell two of something a day and your chain is six weeks, you need to reorder while you still have around eighty-four units on the shelf, plus buffer. Most brands reorder at twenty and then wonder why they were out for a month.
Reading sell-through with barely any data
Sell-through is what percentage of a run has sold in a given period, and it is the most useful single number a small brand has. Track it per design and per size, not just overall — an aggregate of 60% can hide a design that sold out in mediums and never moved an XL.
The pattern to watch for is the shape of the curve rather than the number. A design that sold half its run in the first week and nothing since had a launch, not a business. A design selling steadily at a lower rate is the one worth reordering, because the demand is not dependent on the announcement.
What to change on the reorder
- The size curve, first and always. Your first order was a guess; the reorder should match what actually sold, not what you originally forecast.
- The quantity, upward, but only in proportion to evidence. A design that sold out in three weeks can carry a bigger run. One that took four months cannot, no matter how much you like it.
- Nothing about the garment itself, unless something failed. Changing blank, fit or print method on a reorder means your returning customers get a different product from the one they recommended.
- Possibly the colourway. Adding a second colour of a proven design is a much safer bet than a new design, and it reads as a new product to customers.
The trap of the big reorder
A design sells out, it feels great, and the temptation is to reorder at four times the quantity to capture all that demand and drop a tier in unit price. Sometimes right. Often not — because sell-out speed measures the size of the run as much as the size of the market, and a design that cleared 20 pieces quickly has not demonstrated that it will clear 500.
Step up, do not leap. Twenty to a hundred is evidence-based. Twenty to a thousand is a different bet wearing the costume of a reorder.
Put it on a calendar
The single most effective change most small brands can make is to look at stock on a fixed day every week rather than when something feels low. Fifteen minutes, every Monday, checking each design against its reorder point. It is boring and it eliminates the most common inventory failure there is, which is simply not having noticed in time.
