Dead stock analysis

Gain Control of Unpredictable Inventory Demand With Thermostock®

Automatically identify your blind spots that result from unpredictable low-selling SKUs with our patent-pending AI technology Thermostock and prevent up to 90% of your dead stock.

Low-Volume SKUs Create Massive Blind Spots for Wholesale Distributors

Tens of Thousands of SKUs Are Unmanaged

High-volume SKUs represent the majority of revenue for your business. Naturally, your buyers spend their valuable time optimizing the SKUs that generate the bulk of your sales.

Your ERP purchasing system – with buyer oversight – can manage these SKUs effectively because higher volume SKUs sell consistently and predictably.

On the contrary, low-volume SKUs drag down your profitability. From our dead stock analysis of wholesale distributors across North America, over 85% of stocked SKUs sell 10 times or less per year.

Because your purchasing system can’t create an accurate forecast for these low-volume SKUs, you’re left with suboptimal stocking levels and purchasing quantities, contributing to a significant amount of dead stock and lost sales.

If you had technology that could closely monitor recent sales activity for every SKU, not just high-volume SKUs, you could automatically optimize them for peak profitability and prevent up to 90% of your dead stock.

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Are low-selling SKUs one of your blind spots?

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Prevent Up to 90% of Dead Stock With Thermostock

Dead stock analysis technology completes the inventory picture for big gains.

Automatically identify and optimize your low-volume SKUs with our patent-pending technology, Thermostock. With an API connection to your ERP, you’ll finally be able to take control of low-volume SKUs, allowing you to focus on your A and B items.

Automate SKU rationalization

Thermostock analyzes recent sales of all your stocked SKUs. It marks those not sold in the last 12 months as nonstock or special orders, ensuring that your non-selling SKUs are not purchased to prevent dead stock.

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Configure best-practice inventory policies

Define policies around the specific goals you want to achieve.

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Automate Min/Max

Thermostock analyzes the latest inventory characteristics to calculate the optimal Min/Max, sending recommendations back into your ERP system.

46%

Rebalance

Thermostock recommends a monthly rebalance of overstocked low-volume items to other locations that are still selling those items. This feature prevents unnecessary new inventory purchases, lowering the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS).

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Data-driven optimization

Leveraging machine learning and AI, Thermostock continuously learns and improves to provide ongoing optimal inventory recommendations even as sales fluctuate.

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Setting You Up for Success

Your team is pivotal to your success. That’s why we support your inventory decision-making with technology and our team’s 20-plus years of wholesale distribution experience.

Human touch

We distribute the output from Thermostock to your team for review before the final import into your ERP purchasing system, enabling key personnel such as your branch managers and buyers to override Thermostock’s output based on their knowledge of current sales activity.

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Supply chain consulting

Our experienced team of supply chain analysts is by your side to help you analyze the data outputs and make the most impactful data-driven decisions to reduce your dead stock accumulation.

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Dead stock analysis

We review your data outputs from the Thermostock integration and make recommendations on optimizing assumptions to enhance your most important KPIs.

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Data visualization

By distilling findings from billions of analyzed rows of your data, we automatically trend your improvement using visualization tools.

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The result? Long-term inventory process improvements that increase your profit margin.

Get More from Your ERP Without the Headache

Disruption, expense, and risk of failure make replacing your ERP purchasing module with a big supply chain planning system an unnecessary decision.

Thermostock is a hassle-free solution that integrates directly with your existing ERP.

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No disruption

Thermostock implements within a month rather than requiring a half-year (or even multi-year) software implementation of a new supply chain planning system.

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Less expensive

Adding a purchasing system to your ERP is an investment that takes years to realize a return. Thermostock, however, costs a fraction of the full system, saving you tens of thousands of dollars and months of frustrating implementations.

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No learning curve

Your buyers can continue their workflow without disruptions. They keep using the ERP they already know and get better data to make more informed, proactive decisions.

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Onboarding Is Easy

01
Connect your ERP to Thermostock with an API connection
02
Run the analysis

Thermostock analyzes the inventory characteristics from your ERP to calculate an optimal Min/Max. Characteristics include:

  • Recent sales
  • Supplier & branch/region preference
  • Customer characteristics
  • Sales characteristics
  • Cost
  • Ability to return to vendor
03
Review Thrive output

We’ll send you reports to review our findings and suggest potential overrides. Our supply chain analysts review the data outputs monthly in parallel with your team to apply nuanced insight that can only come from human engagement. We then adjust policies as necessary.

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Automate

Thermostock sends an optimal Min/Max back into your ERP system for continuous inventory performance adjustments.

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Results

Thermostock fully optimizes your low-volume SKUs taking care of outdated minimums. Buyers won’t have to worry about dead stock inventory “sneaking” onto POs – and in no time, you’ll prevent up to 90% of your dead stock.

North America’s Largest Wholesalers Partner With Us to Optimize Dead Stock

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Learn how to identify and prevent dead stock, lost sales, and stockouts with our free demo.
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Are Your Inventory Forecasts and Lead Times Accurate?

Tiltmeter® detects unpredictable demand and supply changes quicker for higher accuracy, reducing dead stock and lost sales caused by stockouts.

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Your Questions, In Focus

What is dead stock?

Dead stock refers to inventory that a wholesale business has on hand but is no longer able to sell – or has a very low likelihood of selling in the future. Most wholesalers consider inventory over 12 months of supply to be dead stock. Dead stock ties up financial resources and storage space, making it an area that wholesalers prioritize optimizing to increase important inventory KPIs like inventory turns.

What causes wholesaler dead stock?

Wholesaler dead stock can be caused by several factors including:

  • Changes in consumer preferences: If consumer preferences shift suddenly, wholesalers may be left with inventory that is no longer in demand.
  • Overestimating demand: Wholesalers may order excessive quantities of a product, anticipating higher demand than what actually materializes.
  • Inaccurate forecasting: Poor forecasting of market trends and customer demand can lead to ordering the wrong quantities of products.
  • Seasonal fluctuations: Seasonal items may become dead stock if they are not sold within their season.
  • Product obsolescence: Advances in technology or changes in industry standards can render certain products obsolete, leading to dead stock.
  • Large vendor minimums: Sometimes quantities are purchased that are in excess of a year's demand.
How can I reduce my dead stock?

A dead stock analysis of your inventory can help provide the insights you need to prevent up to 90% of your dead stock. This analysis can lead to significant optimizations to reduce your dead stock. It will:

  • Identify and monitor SKUs that are not selling or slowing down in volume. Wholesalers stock tens of thousands of SKUs that have not sold in the last 12 months or sold less than 10 times in the last year. These slow or non-moving SKUs only contribute to an average of 20% of your revenue, so buyers simply do not have the time to review their settings in your ERP purchasing module.
  • Implement inventory policies that automatically turn non-selling SKUs to non-stock status in your ERP purchasing system.
  • Implement inventory policies that automatically calculate optimal Min quantities for SKUs that have sold fewer than 10 times in the last 12 months. These SKUs typically have poor forecasts in a purchasing system.
  • Rebalancing inventory to transfer non-selling items with dead stock to other locations where they are still selling.