Retail Stock Ordering: Two questions every product business must answer

Retail Stock Ordering: Two questions every product business must answer

From The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices by Resilient Retail Club's Catherine Erdly

May 14, 2026 · 13 min · Episode 302

About this episode

Catherine Erdly discusses the critical difference between product-level stock ordering and business-level stock planning for product businesses.

"How much should I order?" sounds like one question. It's actually two — and most product business owners only ever answer one of them. (This episode features a free download resource at http://resilientretailclub.com/order ) Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club , Catherine Erdly . In this episode, I'm breaking down the critical difference between product-level stock ordering (the tactical "how many of this line") and business-level stock planning (the strategic "what can I afford overall"). Drawing on my time as a buyer at Paperchase and the frameworks in my book Tame Your Tiger , I'll explain why forecasting apps, Shopify Sidekick , ChatGPT and Claude can all give you the right answer to the wrong question — and how that slowly turns a healthy business into a cash-hungry "tiger". In this episode: Why most stock forecasting tools assume you have unlimited cash The simple reorder calculation that still matters What "the tail" is Three better questions to ask before you place a single order The supermarket scanner analogy that makes stock budgeting click If you're constantly reordering but never feel on top of your stock, pause and plan with this one. 🐅…

People in this episode

Host: Catherine Erdly

Topics covered

  • stock ordering
  • product business
  • cash flow
  • forecasting
  • business strategy

Keywords

  • stock forecasting
  • reorder calculation
  • business planning
  • cash management
  • product strategy

Sponsors

Faire

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Resilient Retail Club, Shopify, ChatGPT, Claude, Paperchase

Products: Tame Your Tiger

More episodes of The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices podcast page.