Inventory how-to

How to plan inventory for a store selling in multiple countries

Treat each country as its own demand pattern even if you hold stock in one place.

Short answer: Treat each country as its own demand pattern even if you hold stock in one place. Forecast sales by variant across all countries combined if you ship from a single warehouse, and adjust lead times and safety days for the slowest customs or shipping lane. If you hold stock in more than one location, you need per-location forecasting and transfer planning, which is a separate problem from reordering.

Separate the two problems

Selling in multiple countries is a demand and shipping question. Holding stock in multiple countries is a location and transfer question. Many stores only do the first: one warehouse, multiple shipping destinations. In that case your forecasting and reorder math stays simple, because all the sales still come out of one stock pool.

If you ship from one location

Add up sales per variant across all countries to get your daily sales rate. Your lead time should reflect your slowest supplier, and your safety days should reflect the most unpredictable shipping lane you serve, usually the country with customs delays or longer transit. This way one reorder point protects all your markets, not just your fastest one.

If you hold stock in more than one country

This is where it gets harder. Each location has its own on-hand, its own local demand, and its own replenishment lead time, either from a supplier or from an internal transfer. You need a forecast per location per variant, plus a transfer plan to move stock from a central warehouse to local ones before they run out. Spreadsheets can do this if you track on-hand, incoming transfers, and daily sales separately for each location.

Account for customs and duties in lead time

Add customs clearance time to your supplier lead time, not as a separate buffer but as part of the total time from order to shelf. If a lane is unreliable, pad the lead time rather than guessing at a fixed number of safety days.

Step by step

  1. List every country you sell to and whether you ship from one warehouse or several
  2. If one warehouse, combine sales across all countries into one daily sales rate per variant
  3. Set lead time to your slowest supplier plus realistic customs time for your toughest destination
  4. Set safety days higher for variants that sell heavily into unpredictable shipping lanes
  5. If you hold stock in multiple countries, build a separate forecast and reorder point per location
  6. Track transfers between locations as their own line, separate from supplier purchase orders
  7. Review the plan every time you add a new country or change a shipping lane

Worked example

A store ships a jacket from one UK warehouse to customers in the UK, Germany, and the US. Combined daily sales across all three markets are 6 units. Lead time from the supplier is 20 days, and the store adds 5 extra days of safety stock to cover customs delays on the US orders, since those are the slowest. Reorder point = 6 x (20 + 5) = 150 units. When stock hits 150, the store places a new order regardless of which country the units eventually ship to.

How SteadyShelf helps

SteadyShelf forecasts and reorders well if you sell to multiple countries from a single stock location, since it works off total variant sales and one lead time per supplier. It does not do per-location forecasting or stock transfers, so if you hold inventory in more than one country or warehouse, you will need to plan those transfers manually outside the app.

$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

Can SteadyShelf set different safety days for different countries?

No. Safety days are set per SKU per supplier, not per country. If one market has much slower shipping, build that delay into the lead time or safety days for the whole SKU, since the forecast does not split sales by destination.

What if I open a second warehouse in another country later

At that point you need to decide how stock splits between locations and how transfers get triggered, which is outside what a single-location reorder tool handles. Keep using combined forecasting for ordering from suppliers, and manage the warehouse split with a separate transfer process.

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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