Blanks are the biggest line in most print shop costs and the easiest place to trap cash. The stockroom that feels like preparedness is often several months of profit sitting in cardboard.
What deserves shelf space
Three tests. A style earns stock if it passes at least two:
- You reorder it monthly or more. Predictable demand is what makes a par level meaningful.
- The lead time hurts. If a stockout costs you a job because the supplier takes ten days, holding is buying reliability.
- It is not at risk of discontinuation. Fashion colours and seasonal ranges are the worst things to hold.
Everything else is ordered per job. Your supplier is a better warehouse than you are.
Setting the par level
par level = (average weekly usage x lead time in weeks) + safety buffer
The safety buffer is where judgement lives. A rough rule: half a lead time's usage for steady lines, a full lead time's usage for lines with lumpy demand or an unreliable supplier.
| Item | Weekly usage | Lead time | Buffer | Par |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Black tee, L | 60 | 1 week | 30 | 90 |
| Black tee, XS | 4 | 1 week | 4 | 8 |
| Navy hoodie, M | 12 | 2 weeks | 12 | 36 |
| Fashion colour tee | 3 | 2 weeks | n/a | Order per job |
Note the XS line. Holding the same depth across a size curve is the most common inventory mistake in apparel: you end up with the extremes on the shelf forever and the middle always out.
Count the middle, not everything
Full stocktakes are painful, so they get skipped, so the numbers drift, so nobody trusts them, so nobody uses them. Cycle counting fixes this: count a small slice weekly, so every fast-moving line gets counted often and the slow ones eventually. Ten minutes a week beats a lost Saturday twice a year.
The three numbers to watch
- Stockouts that cost a job. The only stockout metric that matters.
- Weeks of cover on your top ten lines. Rising cover means cash quietly accumulating on shelves.
- Write-offs. Discontinued, faded, mildewed or simply forgotten. If it is not near zero, you are holding the wrong things.
Order against real demand, not the feeling of being busy
The reorder trigger should come off actual committed orders plus par levels, not off a walk round the stockroom. That means knowing what is committed to jobs already in the system and not yet pulled, which is exactly the number a walk round cannot tell you.
Printer's Friend tracks SKU-level stock with cycle counts, holds a par level per SKU, and suggests purchase orders from committed orders plus par shortfall so you are ordering against demand rather than vibes. Supplier catalogues sync where a live feed exists and import from CSV where it does not, so a quote can check stock before you promise a date.
Related: pricing screen print treats blanks as a cost line, and managing rush season is largely an inventory problem in disguise.