Inventory management for Shopify scrubs and medical apparel brands

The inventory problems scrubs and medical apparel brands run into

• Size curve imbalance. Scrubs sell across many sizes (XS to 5XL in some lines), and demand is not evenly spread. Small and large sizes often sell faster relative to stock than mediums, so a single reorder quantity per style is almost always wrong.
• Color and style proliferation. A single scrub top might come in eight colors and seven sizes, which is 56 variants from one design. Tracking reorder points by hand across that many SKUs is where most owners fall behind.
• Fabric and dye lot variation. Reordering the same SKU from the same supplier can still mean a slightly different dye lot. This is a quality control issue more than an inventory one, but it affects how comfortable you are bulk-ordering far ahead.
• Institutional and bulk buyers. Clinics, hospital departments, and schools sometimes order many units of one size and color at once. These orders can wipe out stock on a specific variant overnight and throw off a normal reorder pattern.
• Private label and custom embroidery delays. If you offer logo embroidery or custom trims, your real lead time is base garment lead time plus decoration time, and the two suppliers rarely move in sync.

Seasonality and demand

Scrubs have a strong back-to-school and new-hire peak in late summer as nursing and allied health programs start new cohorts, plus a January bump tied to new year hiring and New Year's resolutions about work wardrobes. Healthcare hiring also spikes around residency and clinical rotation start dates in some regions. Outside of these windows, demand is fairly steady since scrubs wear out and get replaced year-round, unlike pure fashion apparel. Plan your biggest reorders for core sizes and colors to land in stock a few weeks before the late-summer and January peaks, and expect lead times from overseas cut-and-sew suppliers to stretch further during those same windows because everyone is ordering at once.

Suppliers, lead times and minimums

Most scrubs brands work with overseas cut-and-sew manufacturers, often in Asia, for core styles, and these suppliers typically want a minimum order per style and color, sometimes per size run rather than per individual size. Overseas suppliers often take several weeks to produce and ship, longer if you need fabric dyed to spec or custom embroidery added. Some brands also use domestic cut-and-sew shops or blank wholesalers for faster turnarounds on basics, usually at a higher unit cost but with lower minimums and quicker replenishment, which is useful for filling gaps in your size curve between big overseas orders.

Worked example

Say you sell a women's jogger scrub pant in navy, size Medium, averaging 4 units a day. Your overseas supplier has an 8 week lead time, which is 56 days, and you keep 10 safety days to cover demand spikes from clinic bulk orders. Your reorder point is 4 x (56 + 10) = 264 units. If you want 30 days of cover after the new stock lands, and you currently have 80 units on hand with 150 already on order, your order quantity is 4 x (56 + 30) minus (80 + 150), which is 344 minus 230, equal to 114 units. Your supplier's case pack is 24 units per size, so you would round up to 120 units.

Try it with your own numbers in the reorder point calculator, or size your buffer with the safety stock calculator.

A simple system to start this week

1. List every active variant by style, color, and size, and pull at least three months of sales history per variant if you have it.
2. Get a real lead time from each supplier for base production plus any embroidery or custom decoration step, not just the quoted factory time.
3. Set a safety day buffer per style based on how often you get surprise bulk orders from clinics or institutional buyers.
4. Confirm each supplier's minimum order and case pack by size, since many scrub suppliers set minimums per size run rather than per style.
5. Build your reorder point and order quantity per variant, not per style, so you stop over-ordering mediums and under-ordering XS and XXL.
6. Flag your embroidery or private label supplier separately and track their turnaround as an added step after the base garment arrives.

How SteadyShelf fits scrubs and medical apparel brands

SteadyShelf forecasts demand per variant, so it treats your navy Medium jogger pant separately from your navy Large, which fixes the size curve problem. It calculates order-by dates from each supplier's lead time, rounds suggested quantities to your case packs and minimums, and drafts the purchase order for you to approve and send. It does not track dye lots, expiry, or embroidery sub-steps as a separate workflow, so if you run custom decoration, build that extra time into the lead time you enter for that supplier.

$29/month flat, unlimited products and suppliers, 30-day free trial.

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