Ask a shopkeeper what his best seller is and he will answer immediately. Ask him what has not sold since last year and the answer is a pause. That pause is usually worth a lot of money.
Why it stays invisible
Fast movers announce themselves. You reorder them constantly, so they are always in mind. Slow stock does the opposite: it sits quietly at the back, costs nothing to keep, and never asks for attention.
It is not free, though. It is money you already spent that is doing nothing, in space that could hold something that sells.
How to see it
You need two things: a record of what you hold, and a record of when each item last sold. Software gives you both as a single report, usually called dead stock or non-moving stock, split by thirty, sixty and ninety days.
The first time most owners run it, the number surprises them. It is common for a general store to find a fifth of its stock value in items that have not moved in six months.
- Sort by money tied up, not by quantity
- Ninety days is the line where stock stops being slow and starts being dead
- Check it monthly, not yearly
What to do with it
Return what the supplier will take. Discount what will move at a lower price. Bundle what will not move alone. Write off what is genuinely finished, because carrying it in your stock value is lying to yourself about what the shop is worth.
The point is not to recover every rupee. It is to convert standing money into moving money.
Then stop buying it again
Dead stock is a buying problem, not a selling problem. It arrives because somebody ordered on memory, or took a deal, or repeated last season without checking what last season actually sold.
The report that shows you what is dead also shows you what to order. Use it before the next purchase, not after.
A shop that reviews slow stock every month rarely accumulates much of it. A shop that reviews it once a year discovers a problem too large to fix in one go.
