Managing Stock Like a Pro: My Conversation with Vicki Weinberg

I recently joined Vicki Weinberg on her podcast, Bring Your Product Idea to Life, to talk about one of the topics that comes up most with my clients: stock.

Specifically, the situations that catch small product businesses off guard. Too much cash tied up in the wrong places. Products sitting unsold for weeks while the founder quietly hopes things will improve. Buying decisions made on instinct when the data was sitting right there, ready to tell a much clearer story.

We covered a lot of ground in that conversation, and I wanted to pull out the key points here for anyone who wants to dig into the detail.

The one thing you can control when costs are rising

Costs are going up across the board right now. National insurance, wages, business rates, the ongoing impact of Brexit, the new US tariffs. Most of these are fixed costs you simply cannot change.

What you can change is your stock strategy. And that is where the real opportunity lies.

Your stock investment is one of the few areas where good decisions can genuinely offset the pressure from rising costs elsewhere. Understanding what is selling and why, and buying accordingly, means you are not tying up cash in stock that is not working. That cash can go back into the things that are.

Pricing for value, not just margin

This is probably the advice I share most often, because it is where I see the most money left on the table.

A lot of brands price by applying a standard margin formula to their cost price. It is a logical starting point, but it misses something important: what your product is actually worth to the customer buying it.

If your product is genuinely premium, if the quality is exceptional, if it solves a real problem or brings real joy, your customer may well be willing to pay more than your formula suggests. Not pricing to reflect that means you are underselling yourself, and over time that adds up to a significant amount of lost profit.

The same principle applies across markets. If you sell internationally, a straight currency conversion is not your only option. Customers in the US or the EU are operating in different markets with different price expectations. It is entirely reasonable to have a different pricing architecture for different markets, and when you do it thoughtfully, it protects your margins without causing any issues.

What to do when stock is not selling

Hoping things will improve is not a strategy. I say this with kindness, because I hear it a lot, and I understand the instinct entirely. But if something has not sold in six to eight weeks, the likelihood of it suddenly shifting on its own is low. The longer you leave it, the more cash you have tied up and the harder the problem becomes.

The good news is that you have more options than you might think.

Repositioning a product on your website is often the quickest and most underrated fix. If your slower sellers are buried on page three, move them to page one and test what happens. Sometimes the product is not the problem at all. It simply has not been seen.

Short, on-brand promotions tied to awareness days or calendar events can move stock without feeling like a distress sale. A gift with purchase, a bundle offer on complementary products, a four-day promotion timed to pay weekend. These feel considered rather than desperate.

It is also worth asking whether the issue is a size ratio problem. If you buy in flat size ratios from smallest to largest, you will almost always sell out of your core midrange sizes and be left with excess at the fringes. That is not a sales failure. It is a buying error, and one of the most common ones I see. The fix for next time is to buy in a curve, with more investment in your midrange sizes. For this season, a small markdown on those fringe sizes will free up the cash and create space for something newer.

The metrics that actually matter

There are a lot of numbers in a retail business, and it is easy to feel overwhelmed. But if you are not sure where to start, these three are the ones worth getting to grips with first.

Weeks cover

Divide your current stock by last week’s sales. That tells you how many weeks of stock you have left at your current rate of sale. If your weeks cover is shorter than your lead time from supplier to site, you need to act now or you will be out of stock before your next delivery arrives.

Rate of sale

This is how many units you sell on average per week while the product is in stock. It is your most reliable forecasting tool. If you know you sell five units a week and you have fifty left, you can predict when you will run out, whether that falls within your key selling window, and whether you need to look at reordering now.

Sell through

Sell through is the percentage of what you bought that you have actually sold. It is useful, but it needs context. A low sell through does not automatically mean a product is a poor performer. It might mean you bought too much of it. Always look at sell through alongside your original intake quantity before drawing any conclusions.

My number one piece of advice

Vicki asked me to boil it all down to one thing, and I will give you the same answer I gave her.

“Always ask yourself why. Whatever you are looking at, whether it is your total sales, your product performance, your stock analysis, ask why. Why is this selling? Why is this not? That question is what channels your attention to exactly the right place, rather than disappearing down data rabbit holes that do not actually help you move forward.”

And the second piece of advice, which I mentioned in the podcast too: if you do not have a sales forecast, build one. It does not need to be complex. A simple monthly view of what you expect to sell is enough to start. That one tool will change how you manage your cash flow, your stock investment, and your buying decisions.

Listen to the full episode

The full conversation with Vicki is well worth a listen, especially if you are a product founder juggling a lot of hats and want some practical, no-nonsense guidance on stock and cash flow.

And if anything we covered sparked a question about your own business, bring it to a Merch Clarity Call. That is exactly the right place for it.