🔁 Business & freelancing · Guide
Making The Right Ones Again
A restocking rhythm built on what actually sold.
Making The Right Ones Again
A restocking rhythm built on what actually sold.
Your name
A4 · this is a layout preview in the “Field Notes” design. When you generate, the studio writes every chapter in full, paints the cover and chapter art, and composes a downloadable A4 PDF with your name, bio and store link on it.
Restocking is where a small shop quietly decides its next three months. Most makers restock what they enjoyed making, then wonder why the shelves fill with the same slow lines. This guide is a short routine for counting sales, sorting the range into three piles and setting quantities you can defend.
What's inside
- 1Count What Left The ShelfPulling ninety days of orders into a simple list of item, quantity, price and making time. After it you can see the shape of your range instead of guessing at it.
- 2Three Piles: Repeat, Retire, TestSorting every line into one of three piles using sales, making time and stock age. After it you have a decision for each product rather than a feeling about it.
- 3How Much To MakeSetting quantities from how fast a line sold out last time, with a floor and a ceiling per batch. After it you can commit numbers to a making list without over-producing.
- 4Materials And Lead TimesWorking backwards from supplier delivery times and minimum orders so nothing stalls mid-batch. After it your material orders arrive before you need them rather than after.
- 5Restock DayBatching by process rather than product, photographing as you go, and listing everything in one sitting. After it a restock takes a single day instead of leaking across a fortnight.
- 6Telling People It Is BackThe short announcement sequence for a restock, including a note to anyone who asked to be told. After it your restocks land with the people who were already waiting.
A sample from chapter one
Count what left the shelf
Open the last ninety days of orders and write down every item with the number sold beside it. Do it by hand the first time, because the pattern is easier to see when you are the one writing it out. Most shops find that a small group of items carries the month, a long tail sells once or twice, and a few pieces have not moved at all since they were listed.
Add a second column for the time each piece takes to make and a third for its price. A slow seller that takes an hour is a different problem from a slow seller that takes a full day. You are not hunting for the best product in the abstract; you are deciding which pieces are worth your bench time over the next month.
- Record sold-out dates as well as quantities; a line that emptied in a week was under-made.
- Retire anything with no sales in ninety days instead of restocking it out of habit.
- Make repeats in batches of the same form so set-up and clean-up happen once.
- Keep one test slot in every restock so the range still changes shape over a year.
Key takeaways
- Restocking without counting is just making your favourites again.
- Time per piece belongs next to price in every making decision.
- A line that sold out quickly is telling you the quantity, not only the demand.
The studio writes every chapter from this outline, paints the art and hands you a PDF you can sell the same afternoon.
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