Weeks cover is the number that shows how long the stock you’re holding will take to sell. Knowing that number across ranges and lines transforms the way you make buying, promoting and pricing decisions.
When you run an independent store that trades in seasonal goods (such as cycling, equestrian, outdoor and running), a large share of your money lives tied up in the stock on your shelves. What you buy in ahead of the season becomes your biggest investment, and that makes two things more important than almost anything else: how quickly that stock sells, and the margin you make when it does.
To move stock faster you can discount (and lose profit along the way). Or, to protect margin, you can hold out on price (and leave cash tied up in slow-moving stock). Getting the balance right through the season comes down to knowing which data to pull, and what to do with what it tells you.
What you can learn from weeks cover
At the rate you’re currently selling, how many weeks will it take to sell the stock you’re holding? You can work it out for any line by dividing the stock you have by the number you sell in an average week. Across the whole business, the equivalent is 52 divided by the number of times your stock turns over in a year.
Say you have 60 waterproof jackets in stock and you’re selling five a week, which gives you 12 weeks cover. If there are around eight weeks of cold, wet weather left in the season, you’ll still have jackets left once demand drops off. Either that cash stays tied up until the weather turns, or you discount to clear them. If you spot this early, you have time to promote the line while you can still change how quickly it sells. Spot it too late and there’s little choice but to rely on a heavy markdown at the end of the season.
No number should be read in isolation, though. A high weeks cover doesn’t mean you should jump straight into price cuts, so look at what else is going on first: is the line priced wrongly, hard to find on your website, or missing the sizes people want most? In the same way, a low weeks cover isn’t always good news. If a line sold through early in the season, you may have missed out on even more sales.
You can only act on numbers you can trust
Weeks cover is only as reliable as the stock figures behind it. If goods-in isn’t accurately captured against the purchase order, or your store and website work from different stock records, every report built on those numbers will be off before you start.
With accurate stock levels and margin tracked through the season, weeks cover helps you decide where to act. When you catch a slowing line early, you can push it harder on social channels, give it a prime spot on the sales floor, or put it front and center on your website. If it still struggles to move at full price, you’ll know to order smaller quantities next season.
If you do need to discount, these are our top tips:
- Be selective within the range, marking down only the lines that have stopped selling and leaving everything else alone.
- Use customer and loyalty data to send targeted offers to the people most likely to buy (instead of offering a blanket price cut that rewards everyone).
- Don’t be afraid to hold your price where a line is selling well; there’s no need to follow the store down the street into a race to the bottom.
Buy with data, then plan the sell-through
Suppliers increasingly ask for early commitment on depth of stock, and that’s often where the best terms are. Going into those conversations with real sales, margin and weeks cover figures means your instinct is backed by evidence, so you can buy depth with confidence on the lines that have proved themselves and be more cautious where the numbers are less convincing.
It also pays to plan how you’ll sell the stock through before it arrives. Search ads, shopping campaigns and your website all work harder when they’re pointed at lines with plenty of depth across sizes. Advertising something that’s down to a few odd sizes wastes spend and sends customers away disappointed, and that matters most with seasonal ranges, where the window to sell through at full margin is shorter.
You only need the right few numbers
Weeks cover is a strong place to start, and once it’s part of your routine, a handful of other figures will fill in the rest of the picture.
- Sales and margin by brand, category and supplier show where the business is really making its money.
- Sell-through by size and color tells you whether you’re ordering in line with what customers buy.
- A regular look at aged stock catches lines that have been sitting since last season.
- Splitting sales between your store, your website and events shows where each range sells best.
Want help working out what your numbers are telling you? Get in touch and we’ll gladly talk it through.
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