How I found $18,400 of dead stock before it ate my reorder budget

The problem

I run a small home fragrance brand — candles, diffusers and refills. There are two of us. We do production planning, customer service, packing and marketing, usually in that order and rarely on time.

Every February I sit down with last year’s sales, a supplier price list and a spreadsheet to decide what to make for spring. For years I did what most people do: exported orders, sorted by product and looked at the top sellers. If something sold well, I ordered more. If it did not, I assumed it was seasonal and ordered it again anyway.

That is how I ended up with three shelves of Christmas candles in April, a reorder budget that felt smaller every year, and no clear idea why revenue was up 9% while the bank account was flat.

The old way

Normally I would export every order to CSV, pivot by SKU, VLOOKUP it against my stock report and try to remember which products were seasonal. It took most of a Saturday.

The last time I did it, I missed a whole category because the product names did not match between the export and the stock report. I only found out after I had placed the supplier order.

The question I typed

I wanted a list, not a dashboard. So I asked:

“Which products had zero sales in the last 120 days and still have stock on hand? Show me SKU count, stock value at cost and days since last sale.”

What came back

A table of 41 SKUs, grouped by category. Not 41 random products — 41 products with stock, no sales in four months and a combined cost value of $18,400. That was 68% of my $27,000 inventory value.

At first I thought the answer was simple: clear it all. Then I remembered that half of my catalogue is seasonal. A winter candle with no sales in April is not dead. It is early.

The follow-up that changed the decision

I asked:

“Which of these sold in the same period last year?”

Twenty-three were genuinely dead. Eighteen had sold last year but not this year, which told me something had changed — the season, the price or the listing. That distinction mattered. I did not want to discount products that were simply waiting for their season.

A second follow-up showed me where the cash was concentrated:

“What is the total stock value by category, including products that did sell?”

Winter candles were the biggest block, and they were also the easiest to bundle with the refills that sell all year.

What I did about it

1. 1. Bundled 12 dead SKUs with the two best-selling refills as a “refill + candle” set at a small discount — no sitewide sale.
2. 2. Put 9 gift sets on a 20% clearance for three weeks. Sold 31 of 42 units.
3. 3. Discontinued 2 SKUs that had not sold in 190 days.
4. 4. Removed 20 SKUs from the spring production list: the 18 seasonal products plus the 2 discontinued lines.
5. 5. Moved the 18 seasonal SKUs to the back of the stockroom and set an October reminder.
6. 6. Pinned the dead stock report to my dashboard and set a monthly check.

The point was not to clear everything. It was to stop pretending that every unsold product was about to sell.

The result

I did not need a new inventory system. I needed a list with a date range and a follow-up question.

What I’d do differently

I’d ask the seasonal follow-up first. My first instinct was to clear everything, and I nearly discounted products that sell every November. The second question — “which of these sold in the same period last year?” — saved me from a bad decision.

I would also check stock value at cost, not retail. Retail makes dead stock look like an opportunity. Cost tells you what it is actually costing you.