Reorder cadence: how often an independent store should actually restock

Ask ten independent retailers how often they reorder skincare and you will get ten answers, most of them some version of "when it looks empty". That works right up to the week a hero SKU goes out on a Saturday and comes back the following Thursday, by which time three customers have bought it somewhere else.

Cadence is not a preference. It is arithmetic with two inputs: how much cash you want sitting on a shelf, and what it costs you to place an order.

The two costs pulling in opposite directions

Ordering often costs you freight and time. Every order has a fixed overhead — someone builds it, someone receives it, and unless you clear a free-freight threshold you pay carriage on each one.

Ordering rarely costs you cash and risk. A month of cover is a month of money sitting in a storeroom, ageing, taking up space, and exposed to whatever your storeroom does in July.

The right cadence is the one where those two costs cross. For most independents buying skincare, that lands on fortnightly — with a weekly top-up on a short never-out list.

Let the freight threshold do the work

Here is the shortcut. Take your monthly skincare purchase at cost and divide it by the supplier's free-freight threshold.

• Buying under $1,200 a month at cost? Order monthly, hit the threshold in one go, and hold a little more cover.
• Buying $1,200–$3,000 a month? Order fortnightly — most orders will clear the threshold and cover stays tight.
• Buying over $3,000 a month? Order weekly. Freight is free every time, cash on the shelf is minimal, and you are never more than a week from a fix.

Our thresholds are set with exactly this in mind: free ground freight over $1,200 in the lower 48, and a $150 reorder minimum so a small mid-cycle top-up is a normal transaction rather than a favour.

Do not build a replenishment policy and then discover the freight rules. Read the freight rules and let them pick the policy.

Weeks of cover, in one line

Cover is what you hold divided by what you sell in a week. The target is your reorder interval plus your lead time plus a small buffer.

Ordering fortnightly from a supplier that ships same day and lands next-day ground in Michigan: two weeks of interval, roughly half a week of lead time, one week of buffer. Call it 3.5 weeks of cover on a normal SKU. If a cleanser sells four units a week, you want about fourteen on hand at the moment you place the order.

Cadence	Target cover	Suits
Weekly	2–2.5 weeks	High volume, tight storage, seasonal peaks
Fortnightly	3–4 weeks	Most independent pharmacies and grocery accounts
Monthly	5–6 weeks	Low volume, remote delivery, deep storeroom

Two adjustments. Raise cover on your never-out list, because the cost of a stockout there is a lost customer rather than a lost sale. Lower it on anything with a short PAO or a printed expiry — actives and sun care especially — because ageing stock in those lines is a real write-off risk.

Min/max beats gut feel

For every SKU, set two numbers: the level at which you reorder (min) and the level you order back up to (max). Min is your cover target; max is min plus one case pack. Write them on the shelf edge or in your POS and then obey them, even when a SKU "looks fine".

The value is not precision. It is that a min/max survives holidays, a new hire, and the week your manager is off. A shelf managed by feel is really managed by whoever happens to be looking at it.

A worked example

A pharmacy sells 4 units a week of a ceramide moisturizing lotion. It orders fortnightly, and the case pack is 12.

• Cover target: 3.5 weeks × 4 = 14 units. That is the min.
• Max: 14 + 12 = 26 units.
• When the count hits 14 on a Monday, one case goes on the order. When it hits 8, it goes on the next order whether or not it is the normal day.

That is the whole system. It takes a clipboard and five minutes a fortnight, and it removes almost every avoidable stockout on the bay.

Seasonal exceptions worth writing down

• Sun care, April to July. Move to weekly top-ups on your top five SPF SKUs and ignore the normal cover target — the peak is too short to recover a stockout.
• Back to school, mid-July. Acne and teen lines need their build placed before the last week of July, not during August.
• October to December. Lip balm and hand cream shift from the bay to the till. Cover should follow the display, and till stock runs out faster than anyone expects.
• January. Cut cover across the board. It is the slowest month in the category and the best month to clear anything ageing.

Set the cadence once, write the min/max down, and revisit both twice a year when you reset the bay. That is genuinely all the replenishment policy a skincare set needs.