Shoe store inventory: managing size runs, markup and reorders

Open any shoe store's stockroom mid-season and you'll see the same pattern: a wall of boxes that says "12 pairs in stock" and a sales floor that can't sell a single one, because those 12 pairs are two size 6s, one size 6.5, four size 11s and five size 12s. The style isn't out of stock. It's out of the sizes people actually wear. That gap — between what the stock count says and what's actually sellable — is where a lot of shoe retail margin quietly disappears.

Here's how to manage it properly.

A style is not one item — it's a size run

The first mental shift is to stop thinking of a shoe as a single SKU. A style you buy as "Style 4021, brown leather oxford" usually arrives as a run across, say, sizes 6 through 12. Each size in that run sells at a different rate, because foot sizes aren't evenly distributed in the population. The middle sizes — 8, 8.5, 9, 9.5 for men's, roughly 7 to 8.5 for women's — carry the bulk of demand. The small and large ends move slowly.

That means a size run doesn't sell down evenly. It sells down from the middle out. By the time you've sold half the pairs you bought, you've often sold three-quarters of the sizes anyone actually wants, and you're left holding the ends of the curve. This is called a broken size run, and it's normal — every shoe retailer deals with it. The mistake is not noticing it's happened until the shelf is full of dead stock.

The fix is tracking stock at the size level, not just the style level. If your system only tells you "12 pairs of style 4021," you can't see the break coming. If it tells you the size breakdown, you can reorder the middle sizes while they're still moving and mark down the ends before they've sat for months.

Sell-through: the number that tells you what to do next

Sell-through rate is the single most useful number in footwear retail, and it's simple: pairs sold divided by pairs sold plus pairs still on hand. If you bought 40 pairs of a style and have sold 30, sell-through is 75%.

A high sell-through on a style means: reorder it, and reorder it now, before you run out of the sizes that are moving. A low sell-through — a style that's been sitting for a season — is a signal to stop reordering and start thinking about a markdown before it ties up cash and shelf space indefinitely. Sell-through calculated per size, not just per style, is what actually catches a broken run early: the style-level number can look healthy (60% sold) while the sizes left are exactly the ones nobody wants.

Reorder points: replacing gut feel with a number

Most independent shoe stores reorder on instinct — someone notices a bin looking thin and calls the supplier. That works until it doesn't, usually right before a busy weekend or a season change.

A reorder point takes two things you already know — how fast a style sells per day or week, and how long your supplier takes to deliver (lead time) — and turns them into a threshold: the stock level at which you need to place an order right now so you don't run out before the new pairs arrive. If a style sells 2 pairs a day and your supplier's lead time is 10 days, you need to reorder once you're down to roughly 20 pairs, not when you're down to zero. Build in a small buffer for slower or faster weeks and you've got a number that tells you when to act instead of a shelf you have to eyeball.

The same logic works size-by-size. A style might look fine in total while its size 9 — the fastest mover — is already below its reorder point. Watching the aggregate number and missing the size-level one is exactly how a store ends up "in stock" and unable to sell.

Markup vs. margin — get this straight before you price anything

This trips up more new shoe retailers than anything else. Markup is profit as a percentage of your cost. Margin is profit as a percentage of your selling price. They sound interchangeable and they are not: a 100% markup — doubling your cost — is only a 50% margin, not 100%.

Concretely: if a pair costs you $40 wholesale and you sell it for $80, you've marked it up 100% ($40 profit on $40 cost), but your margin is 50% ($40 profit on an $80 sale price). If you're mentally treating "100% markup" as "100% margin," you're overestimating your actual profitability by a wide margin — literally. Get in the habit of checking both numbers side by side for every style, because the one you use to think about pricing power (markup) and the one that actually reflects what share of each sale is profit (margin) are genuinely different figures.

Markdowns: pricing the broken run without pricing yourself into a loss

Once a run breaks — you've got the odd sizes left and demand for them is thin — the instinct is to slash the price to move it. That's usually right, but only if you check the number first: what margin does that markdown price still leave against what you paid? A markdown that drops the price below your wholesale cost isn't clearing inventory, it's paying customers to take stock off your hands. Work out the price before you put the sign up, not after, so a clearance sale stays a sale and doesn't quietly turn into a loss leader.

Seasonality: buy against the calendar, not against last week

Footwear is seasonal in ways that catch new owners off guard — sandals and lightweight styles move in spring, boots and insulated shoes in fall, and school-shoe demand spikes sharply for a few weeks around back-to-school. A reorder point built purely from last week's sales will under-order right before a seasonal spike and over-order right after one ends. Adjust your reorder thresholds ahead of known seasonal shifts rather than reacting to them once the shelves are already empty or already full.

Putting it together

None of this requires new software or a POS overhaul — it requires tracking the right numbers at the right level: cost and price per style with margin and markup shown separately, stock and sell-through per size (not just per style), and a reorder point built from your own sales pace and your supplier's lead time. If you're doing this in a spreadsheet rather than a full POS system, the Shoe Store Business Kit is built around exactly this structure — per-style pricing with margin and markup side by side, a stockroom sheet with sell-through and reorder flags, and markdown pricing that shows the margin a clearance price still leaves before you commit to it.

Run the numbers at the size level, watch sell-through instead of just the shelf, and reorder against a threshold instead of a gut feeling. That's most of what separates a shoe store that turns its stock steadily from one that's always either sold out in the popular sizes or sitting on a stack of the ones that don't move.