Stop losing money on dead stock: inventory management for African retailers
Simple techniques to know what's selling, what's sitting, and when to reorder — even if you have multiple locations.
Dead stock is the silent killer of retail businesses in Africa. You buy 100 units of a product, sell 60, and the remaining 40 sit on your shelf for months — tying up capital you could use for products that actually sell.
The first step is visibility. You need to know exactly what you have, where it is, and how fast it's moving. If you're still counting stock manually with a notebook, you're already behind. A simple inventory system that tracks every sale and purchase in real-time is the minimum.
The ABC method is your best friend. Categorize your products: A-items are your top 20% of products that generate 80% of revenue (never run out of these). B-items are steady sellers that need regular monitoring. C-items are slow movers — order these in small quantities or not at all.
Set reorder points for your A-items. If you sell 10 units of Product X per week and your supplier takes 2 weeks to deliver, your reorder point is 20 units plus a safety buffer. SawaSuite can calculate this automatically and alert you when stock drops below the threshold.
For businesses with multiple locations (a shop and a warehouse, or two branches), stock transfers are critical. Without a system, you end up with Product X overstocked at Branch A while Branch B has customers asking for it. Real-time inventory sync across locations solves this.
Finally, do a dead stock audit every quarter. Any product that hasn't sold in 90 days should be discounted, bundled with popular items, or cleared out. The cash locked in dead stock is always more valuable than the stock itself.