Ask ten boutique owners how many of each style they buy and you'll get ten answers. Ask them which order they regret most and nearly all of them will describe the same thing: a style they loved, bought deep, and spent two months trying to clear.
Getting quantity right matters more than getting style right. A so-so style bought in sensible numbers costs you very little. A great style bought in the wrong numbers can tie up your cash for a whole season.
Here's how experienced buyers decide how much to order.
Start with your budget, then work down to units
Most new retailers do this backwards. They pick the styles they like, add up the bill, and then worry about whether they can afford it.
Flip it round. Decide how much you can spend this month, then split that budget before you look at a single product. A simple starting framework for a womenswear boutique:
• 60% to 70% on proven sellers and core pieces (styles, shapes and colours you know your customers buy)
• 20% to 30% on new styles and seasonal trends
• around 10% held back for reorders on whatever sells fastest
That last slice is the one most people skip, and it's the one that makes the most money. Holding cash back to rebuy a winner is almost always more profitable than guessing a new style.
How many units per style?
For a small independent shop or online boutique, these are sensible starting points:
|
Type of style |
Units per style (first order) |
Why |
|
Brand new, untested style |
6 to 12 |
Enough to judge demand across a size run without real risk |
|
Proven style, new colour |
12 to 24 |
The shape is tested, the colour is the only unknown |
|
Consistent bestseller |
24 to 48+ |
Buy to cover 4 to 6 weeks of sales |
|
Statement or occasion piece |
3 to 6 |
High price, narrow audience |
If you sell through both a shop and online, or through marketplaces as well as your own site, you can nudge these numbers up. Just don't let a second channel become an excuse to buy blind.
Get the size split right
This is where overordering usually hides. Buying 12 of a dress sounds cautious. Buying 12 split evenly across five sizes means you'll sell out of 12 and 14 in a week and still have the 8s in March.
Most UK womenswear follows a bell curve that peaks around sizes 12 and 14. A reasonable starting ratio across a 8 to 16 run:
|
Size |
8 |
10 |
12 |
14 |
16 |
|
Ratio |
1 |
2 |
3 |
3 |
2 |
|
Units in an order of 11 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
3 |
2 |
Your own sales history beats any generic ratio, so check it. Pull the last six months of sales by size and you'll probably find your customer skews one way or the other. Stock to your actual customer, not an average one.
Many Italian wholesale styles come in one size (often labelled as fitting UK 8 to 12 or 10 to 14) or in S/M/L packs. One-size pieces make quantity decisions much easier because there's no size curve to get wrong. They're a smart way to test a new shape before committing to a sized version.
Use sales data to set quantities for repeat buys
Once a style has been in stock for a few weeks, stop guessing. Use this simple calculation:
• Weekly sales rate = units sold / weeks in stock
• Reorder quantity = weekly sales rate x (weeks until next delivery + weeks of cover you want) - stock on hand
Example: a jumper has sold 18 units in 3 weeks, so 6 a week. Your next delivery is 1 week away and you want 4 weeks of cover after that. You have 5 left. 6 x (1 + 4) - 5 = 25 units to reorder.
That number will almost always be different from what your gut would have told you.
MOQs: when they help and when they hurt
A minimum order quantity (MOQ) is the smallest amount a supplier will sell you, either per style, per colour or per order. High MOQs force you to buy deeper than you'd like, which is where a lot of overstock comes from.
For a new or small retailer, low or no MOQ suppliers let you spread the same budget across more styles. That means more variety on the rail, more chances to find a winner and less money stuck in any one line. As you grow and know your bestsellers, higher-MOQ deals with better unit pricing start to make sense for those specific lines.
How much should a new boutique buy?
For a first order, go wide and shallow. Breadth tells you what your customers want. Depth is something you earn once you know.
A new boutique with, say, a £3,000 opening budget and an average wholesale cost of £12 has around 250 units to play with. That could look like 25 to 30 styles at 6 to 10 units each, plus some held-back budget. You'll learn more from that than from 10 styles at 25 each.
The goal of a first order is information as much as sales. Every style that sells out, and every one that doesn't, tells you how to buy the next one.
Signs you're overordering
• You regularly have more than 12 weeks of stock on a single style
• More than a third of your stock ends up in the sale
• You can't afford to reorder a bestseller because cash is tied up elsewhere
• Certain sizes are always left at the end of a line
If two or more of those sound familiar, cut the depth on new styles and put the savings into reorders.
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