Sell-through rate
Max Pechonis · Founder, Rebridge ·
Sell-through rate is the share of the stock you took in that you have sold, over a stated period. Units sold divided by units available, as a percentage. It only means something with the period and the starting point both stated.
The formula, and the two conventions
Sell-through % = units sold ÷ units available × 100
The disagreement is over "available", and both versions are in real use:
Against receipts. Units sold divided by units received. Answers "how much of what I bought has gone?" and is the version a buyer wants when judging an order.
Against available stock. Units sold divided by opening stock plus receipts. Answers "how much of everything I could have sold has gone?" and matters most when a period starts with heavy carryover, because a strong receipt-based rate can sit alongside a large pile of older stock.
Receipts is the more common of the two. Neither is wrong, and they give different numbers for the same product, which is the problem: comparing one against the other is easy to do by accident when two reports label both columns "sell-through". Check the denominator before treating two figures as the same metric.
A worked example
A shop receives 120 units of a style and sells 42 in the first four weeks.
42 ÷ 120 = 35% sell-through at four weeks.
Without "at four weeks" that 35% is unreadable. The same figure is strong for a seasonal range landing early and weak for a core line that has had a month of full-price trading.
What the number is actually for
Sell-through is a comparison instrument rather than a score. A single figure in isolation supports almost no decision; the same figure next to a comparable one supports several.
The comparisons that earn their keep are the same product against the same week last year, one colorway against the others in its family, and one category against the rest of the store at the same point in the season.
That second one is why catalog structure decides whether this metric works at all. If a style is split across several product records, its sell-through is computed on a fragment and the comparison is against noise. A variant group that holds the whole family is what makes the number describe the style rather than one arbitrary version of it.
Questions
What is a good sell-through rate?
There is no universal figure, and any number quoted without a period and a category attached is not usable. What is comparable is your own history: the same style at the same week last year, or the same category at the same point in the season.
Should sell-through be measured in units or dollars?
Units for buying decisions, because they tell you how the product moved regardless of discounting. Dollars for margin decisions, because they capture what the movement was worth. A product can have strong unit sell-through and poor dollar performance if it only moved on markdown.
Why does my sell-through look different in two reports?
Check the denominator first. One report is probably dividing by units received and the other by opening stock plus receipts, which are the two conventions in use and give different answers for the same product. Neither is wrong; treating them as the same metric is.