Supply chain glossary
Dead Stock
Inventory that has stopped selling and will not move at its current price, place or form – and where the line between dead stock and slow movers is drawn.
11. september 2026
3 min
Dead stock is inventory that has stopped selling and is unlikely to sell at its current price, location or configuration. It ties up warehouse space and working capital, and unlike a stockout it triggers no KPI alarm, so it accumulates quietly until someone books a write‑off.
The line between dead stock and slow‑moving stock is set by a rule, not found in the data. One workable segmentation counts the months with at least one sale over the last twelve: three or fewer marks a dead stock candidate, four to seven sporadic demand, eight to twelve regular sales. Where that threshold sits decides which items go to markdown and which stay in replenishment. Set it too tight and items with real but irregular demand – spare parts, seasonal lines, the long tail of the assortment – are written off while customers are still asking for them.
- Stock transfer: move the stock to a location where the item still sells. The cheapest exit, but only available while the network is planned as one pool.
- Markdown: recover the cash at a lower margin. The later it starts, the deeper the discount has to be.
- Write‑off: an accounting close, not a solution – the capital is gone and the storage has already been paid for.
Dead stock in practice
Dead stock is rarely a replenishment error. It is created earlier: an item listed and never delisted, a launch forecast that did not materialize, a promotional buy that outlived the campaign, a supplier minimum order quantity (MOQ) larger than a year of demand. The correction therefore sits in two places at once. On the assortment side, Veritico RANGE clusters stores by purchasing behavior, ranks listing and delisting candidates and shows the KPI impact of a change before it is made. On the flow side, Veritico STOCK segments items by sales frequency, manages expiry against shelf life, reports overstock in money and proposes stock transfers when one location holds a surplus another can sell.
The order matters: clearing the warehouse without touching the listing only buys time until the same items come back. See assortment and planogram optimization for the listing side and demand forecasting and inventory optimization for the stock side.
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