A 7-day stockout doesn't just cost you 7 days of revenue It costs you 90 days of
By Noah Wickham · May 26, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
A 7-day stockout doesn't just cost you 7 days of revenue
It costs you 90 days of momentum
When your product goes out of stock, you don't lose the missed sales, you lose the rank, the badges, the velocity signals, the algorithmic position you spent six months building
Amazon doesn't pause your rank when you stock out, it actively demotes you and rewards competitors who have inventory
When you finally restock, you're starting from a worse position than you were in before the stockout
This is why inventory planning isn't a finance task, it's a marketing task
Four-step formula to set your reorder point
➝ Step 1, find your daily sales velocity, take your 30-day units sold and divide by 30
➝ Step 2, calculate lead time demand, daily sales multiplied by your supplier's actual lead time, ports, customs, freight, everything
➝ Step 3, add a safety buffer, daily sales multiplied by 14 days to account for shipping delays, demand spikes, supplier hiccups
➝ Step 4, set your reorder point, lead time demand plus buffer stock, that's the inventory level where you trigger the next PO
If your supplier takes 60 days and you sell 20 units a day, your reorder point is 1,200 plus 280, you reorder when you hit 1,480 units in stock
Check this number weekly, not monthly
A month is enough time to slide from healthy to stocked out in a category with normal demand variance, much less holiday or Prime Day
The target is 2 to 3 months of FBA stock at all times unless your velocity proves you can carry more without IPI penalties
Stockouts are the easiest Amazon mistake to prevent and the most expensive one to recover from
Plan inventory like your rank depends on it
Because it does