It is the question we hear more than any other, and it is the right one to ask. How much should you order?
The stakes run both directions. Order too little and you miss sales, frustrate customers, and scramble to reorder at the worst possible time. Order too much and you are sitting on boxes nobody is buying, with cash tied up that could be working somewhere else.
Most brands do not have a system for this. They go with their gut, round up because the per unit price drops at higher quantities, and hope it works out. Sometimes it does. Often it does not, and the result is a pallet of XL tees in a storage unit.
Dead inventory is one of the most common merch mistakes we see, and it is almost always a planning problem rather than a design problem. Here is the framework that takes most of the guesswork out.
Start with your sell through data
If you have sold merch before, you already have the most useful number you will ever get: how fast your last run moved, broken out by size and style. Start there.
If you have no history yet, start conservatively. You cannot un print 500 tees nobody wanted. But if everyone wants your merch, you can always reorder. Selling out is a much better problem than storing the overage, and a sellout gives you real data to size the next run.
Apparel and accessories need different math
This is the distinction most brands miss, and it changes the whole calculation.
Apparel is a size curve problem. Order 200 tees and you are really making six separate bets, and the one you get wrong is the one that sits. The small and the 3XL are where dead stock lives.
Accessories and souvenirs have no size curve at all. A hat, a sticker, a pin, a tumbler, a keychain, a patch. One SKU, one bet, and a much flatter risk profile. They also do not go out of style the way a cut or a fit does, so a slow accessory is a patience problem rather than a write off.
Practically, that means you can afford to go deeper on accessories than apparel at the same dollar commitment. If a run has you nervous, shifting part of the budget from a fourth apparel style into drinkware or hard goods lowers your risk and widens the price range you can sell at.
Split your lineup into core and seasonal
Core items are your staples. The tee and the hat that are always available, always on brand, always restockable. These earn deeper inventory because you know they move all year.
Seasonal and limited items get smaller, intentional runs. A holiday piece, an event design, a collaboration. If they sell out, that is a feature. Scarcity on a limited item is doing work for you. Scarcity on your core item is just a missed sale.
Most brands get this backwards. They order deep on the exciting new design and thin on the staple, then wonder why the staple is out of stock in March. If you are still working out which items belong in which tier, start with how to build a merch lineup.
Reorder on velocity, not instinct
Track what is actually moving and how fast. Units per week, by SKU and size. Set a reorder point based on that number plus your production lead time, and let the data tell you when to go back to press.
This is the step that separates a merch program from a series of merch orders. You are not reacting to an empty shelf. You are seeing it coming six weeks out.
The price break trap
One more thing worth naming. The per unit price always drops at higher quantities, and that math is real. But the cheapest per unit price on merch you do not sell is the most expensive merch you will ever buy.
Run the comparison honestly. If moving from 100 to 250 units drops your cost by two dollars a piece but you only expect to sell 120, the savings cost you money. The right question is never what is cheapest per unit. It is what gets you the most sell through per dollar spent.
Where we come in
We help brands plan inventory as part of the merch program, across apparel, accessories and hard goods, not as an afterthought once the art is approved. And we warehouse it, so you are not staring at those boxes every day.
If you are sizing a run right now and want a second opinion on the numbers, let us take a look.