He Had 400 Shirts and Could Not Tell You What He Had
A shop selling clothing or footwear does not have 400 products. It has 400 combinations, and treating them as one line is why the sizes that sell are the ones out of stock.
Imran’s readymade shop in Bhopal listed "Men’s Formal Shirt — Blue" with a quantity of 38. On the shelf, those 38 were four sizes, and 26 of them were size 44.
He had been reordering against the number 38, which told him he was well stocked. Meanwhile he had turned away customers wanting 39 and 40 for eleven consecutive days, and would carry the 44s for another nine months before discounting them to clear.
The Multiplication
A grocery shop’s product list is roughly its number of products. An apparel or footwear shop’s list is a multiplication, and it gets large quickly.
- One shirt design, in 5 sizes and 4 colours, is 20 stock lines
- One shoe model, in 7 sizes and 2 colours, is 14
- Forty designs at that scale is between five and eight hundred lines
These are not administrative subdivisions. A size 40 is not a partial substitute for a size 44 — to the customer who needs 40, your 26 size-44 shirts are worth nothing. Stock that cannot serve the demand in front of it is dead stock, regardless of how recently it arrived.
My records said thirty-eight shirts. My customer wanted one shirt. Both of us were right and he still left.
Two Levels, Not One
The structure that works separates the thing you buy and market from the thing you sell and count.
- The style — design, brand, fabric, season, cost band. This is what you reorder and what you talk about
- The variant — one specific size and colour. This is what has a quantity, a barcode, and a customer
Reporting rolls up to the style, so you can see that blue formal shirts are selling. Counting and reordering happen at the variant, so you can see that it is 39 and 40 that are selling and 44 that is not.
The Size Curve Is the Whole Game
Imran’s distributor sold shirts in an assorted pack, an even spread across sizes. His customers are not an even spread across sizes, and no shop’s are.
Six months of variant-level sales gave him his actual curve: 39 and 40 were 46% of his shirt sales, 44 was 7%. He had been buying 20% of his stock in a size that produced 7% of his demand, which is the entire explanation for both his stockouts and his markdowns.
- Buy broken packs where a distributor allows it, even at a slightly worse rate — the rate is cheaper than the markdown
- Where only assorted packs are available, plan the clearance for the tail sizes as a cost of the pack, not a surprise
- Recompute the curve each season. Curves move, and a curve from two years ago is a guess
- Watch the extremes: the smallest and largest sizes are where the markdown pile comes from
Nobody records the customer who wanted a 40 and left. Variant-level stock is the only way this becomes a number rather than a vague sense that trade was quiet. In most apparel shops the lost sales from core-size stockouts exceed the markdown losses on tail sizes, and neither appears in the accounts.
Making It Workable at the Counter
The objection to variant tracking is always the same and it is fair: nobody wants to scroll a list of eight hundred lines during a sale.
- Barcode each variant. A tagged garment scans in a second and no list is browsed at all
- Where tagging is impractical, a size-and-colour grid on one screen is faster than any search
- Enter the variants when the delivery is received and priced, not later, and not during a sale
- Let staff see stock by size while the customer is standing there — "we have 40 in white" is a saved sale
After a season of buying to his own curve, Imran’s end-of-season markdown pile was 40% smaller and his core sizes were in stock through the festival weeks, which is when they earn.
Mapis handles size and colour variants under a single style, with per-variant stock and barcodes and a size-curve view of what actually sells, so reordering is against demand rather than against a total.
Frequently asked questions
How should a clothing shop track size and colour in inventory?
At two levels. The style — design, brand, fabric, season — is what you buy, market and report on. The variant — one specific size and colour — is what carries the quantity, the barcode and the customer. Counting and reordering must happen at variant level, because a size 44 cannot serve a customer who needs a 40.
What is a size curve and why does it matter?
The share of your sales that each size represents. It is never an even spread, but distributors often sell assorted packs as though it were. A shop whose 39 and 40 are 46% of shirt sales while 44 is 7% will stock out of its core sizes and mark down its tail sizes simultaneously if it buys the pack as supplied.
How many SKUs does an apparel shop actually have?
The multiplication of designs, sizes and colours. One shirt design in five sizes and four colours is twenty stock lines, so forty designs at that scale is five to eight hundred. Treating each design as a single line with one quantity is the root cause of both stockouts and markdowns in most small apparel shops.
Is variant-level tracking practical at a busy counter?
Yes, provided variants are barcoded at the point of receiving and pricing rather than browsed during a sale. A tagged garment scans in a second. Where tagging is impractical, a size-and-colour grid on one screen is faster than searching a long list, and it also lets staff answer "do you have this in 40" without leaving the customer.