The four numbers that actually control your capacity
Capacity is granted against performance, so the levers are operational rather than administrative. A SKU that turns quickly earns space for the SKUs that do not.
| Metric | What it measures | Healthy operating range |
|---|---|---|
| Sell-through rate | Units shipped versus average units stored | Above category median, reviewed monthly |
| Days of cover | How long current stock lasts at trailing velocity | 45 to 75 days for core ASINs |
| Aged inventory share | Units past the surcharge threshold | Under 5 percent of stored units |
| Stranded units | Inventory attached to an unsellable listing | Zero, cleared weekly |
The weekly inventory cadence
The cadence matters more than the tooling. Most inventory losses we audit are not forecasting failures, they are three-week-old alerts nobody owned.
- Monday: pull days of cover per ASIN and flag anything under 30 or over 90 days
- Tuesday: raise or file replenishment shipments for flagged fast movers
- Wednesday: clear stranded, unfulfillable, and suppressed listings
- Thursday: review aged inventory and decide between price action, removal, or liquidation
- Friday: reconcile inbound receipt discrepancies and open the reimbursement cases they justify
How inventory decisions should change advertising
Advertising and inventory are the same decision viewed from two dashboards. When days of cover fall below thirty on a core ASIN, discovery spend should be trimmed before the stockout, not after it, so budget is not spent building demand you cannot serve.
The reverse is also true: an ASIN sitting on ninety days of cover is a candidate for coupon plus bid increase, because the margin given away is cheaper than the storage surcharge plus the eventual removal fee.
Recovering rank after a stockout
A stockout resets recent conversion history, which is the input organic rank leans on hardest. Recovery is faster when the listing goes back live with the same price and the same main image, and when advertising restarts at pre-stockout bids on the exact-match terms that previously converted.
Do not relaunch with a discount and a new hero image at the same time. Two variables changing at once makes the recovery curve unreadable.
