Stockout
The point at which a product has no sellable inventory left. On Amazon a stockout stops sales and can also cost you search ranking and the Featured Offer.
What Is a Stockout?
A stockout happens when you run out of sellable units of a product. The listing shows as unavailable (or another seller takes the sale), and it stays that way until new inventory is received and checked in.
What a Stockout Costs
- Lost sales - every day out of stock is revenue you do not get back
- Lost ranking - sales history feeds organic rank and Best Sellers Rank, so a gap in sales tends to push the listing down
- Interrupted advertising - ads for an out-of-stock product stop running, and campaign performance can take time to recover after you restock
- Costly recovery - getting back in stock quickly often means air freight or split shipments, which eat into margin
How to Prevent One
Know your sales velocity, your supplier lead time and how much safety stock you want, then set a reorder point from those three numbers. Recheck it before peak periods, when velocity can change within days.
How SellerLegend Helps
SellerLegend's inventory forecasting tracks sales velocity over several periods and gives each product a recommended purchase date and quantity, and low-inventory alerts can be sent to your own systems as webhooks.
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