Inventory how-to

How to plan inventory for a pop up shop or market

Pick a sales target per day, pick the SKUs you think will sell, and buy enough to cover that target plus a buffer for your best sellers.

Short answer: Pick a sales target per day, pick the SKUs you think will sell, and buy enough to cover that target plus a buffer for your best sellers. Treat it as a one-off event with a fixed stock budget, not an ongoing reorder cycle, since you cannot restock mid-event in most cases.

Start with a sales estimate, not a stock list

Before picking products, decide how many units you realistically expect to sell per day at the event. Use your online daily sales for similar products as a starting point, then adjust up or down based on foot traffic, event size, and price point. This number drives everything else, so be honest rather than optimistic.

Rank products by how well they sell online

Pull your top sellers by units sold over the last 28 to 60 days online. These are your safest bets for a pop up, since you already have proof people want them. Give new or slow-moving products a small test quantity only, not a full allocation, since an event is a bad place to find out a product does not sell.

Build a simple buffer into every SKU

For each SKU, take your expected units sold at the event and add a buffer of 20 to 30 percent for your top two or three sellers, since running out of your best product on day one wastes the rest of the event. For slower SKUs, bring less and accept you might sell out or carry stock back.

Decide what happens to leftover stock before you go

Plan in advance whether leftover units go back into your regular online stock, get discounted on site afterward, or get held for the next event. This affects how aggressively you should buy. If leftovers simply return to your main inventory pool, you can afford to overbuy slightly on fast movers.

Step by step

  1. List your top 10 to 15 online sellers by units sold in the last 28 to 60 days.
  2. Set a daily sales target for the event based on expected foot traffic and your online sales pace.
  3. Multiply your daily target by the number of event days to get a base unit count per SKU.
  4. Add a 20 to 30 percent buffer to your top 2 to 3 sellers only.
  5. Keep new or untested products to a small trial quantity, such as 5 to 10 units.
  6. Decide before the event where unsold stock will go afterward.
  7. Count and log what you actually sold each day so the data feeds your next forecast.

Worked example

A store expects to sell its top candle scent at a weekend market. Online it sells 4 units a day on average. The market runs 3 days, so the base estimate is 4 x 3 = 12 units. The owner adds a 25 percent buffer for this top seller: 12 x 1.25 = 15 units, rounded up to 16 to match the case pack. For a slower scent selling 1 unit a day online, they bring 3 units total with no buffer, enough to cover the event without overcommitting.

How SteadyShelf helps

SteadyShelf forecasts and reorders for your ongoing online store, not one-off events, so it will not generate a pop up shop plan for you. You can still use its per-variant sales data as the starting point for your estimates, then do the event math manually as shown above.

$29/month flat, unlimited products and suppliers, 30-day free trial. Run the numbers now with the free reorder point calculator.

SteadyShelf is launching on the Shopify App Store. Join early access to get the install link first.

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FAQ

Should I pull stock from my online store for the pop up?

If you do, update your on hand counts manually once the event stock is set aside, since SteadyShelf only sees what is recorded in your store and cannot tell the difference between online stock and stock sitting in a box for a market.

What should I do with leftover event stock when I get back?

Receive it back into your store as soon as possible so your on hand numbers are accurate again. Any delay means your forecast and reorder dates for those SKUs will be off until the count is corrected.

Let SteadyShelf do this math for every SKU

Order-by dates per supplier, seasonal forecasts and draft POs for your Shopify store. $29/month after a 30-day free trial.

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