After the school rush: what to reorder, and what to quietly stop

The temptation after a busy season is to stop thinking about stock until the next one. That is a waste

of the only period in the year when you have real evidence rather than opinion.

Sort your shelf into three piles

Walk the shop with a notebook and put every design into one of three groups.

Sold out or nearly. These earned their place. Reorder them with more depth than last time, not the

same. A design that cleared in three weeks would have cleared twice the quantity.

Sold steadily but not out. The workhorses. Keep them, do not expand them.

Barely moved. Be honest here, because this is the pile that costs money. Ask one question: was it

the design, or was it the placement? A good design on a high shelf behind the counter never had a

chance. If it had a fair position and still did not move, stop reordering it.

The mistake almost everyone makes

Reordering the same spread again "because it sold". A season is not a single number — it is twenty

designs, of which perhaps five did most of the work. Repeating the whole spread means repeating the

fifteen that did not.

Narrow and deep beats wide and thin, every time, in this category.

Use the quiet weeks properly

• Tidy the pegs. Faced, refilled, nothing hanging by one hook.
• Move the impulse range to the counter if it drifted during the rush.
• Write down what you learned while you still remember it. Next season you will not.

What to have on the shelf now

Demand does not disappear after the session starts — it changes shape. Replacements sell steadily:

erasers, sharpeners, refills, mechanical pencils, and the pens children lose. Keep those deep and let

the seasonal stock breathe.

If a gifting festival is approaching, that is the next thing to plan, and it wants different stock

entirely — sets, boxes, anything that looks like a present.

Browse the catalogue — every product shows its case size, so you can plan depth before you

commit.