# Dead stock: the 90-day rule for clearing slow SKUs

Source: https://deftmerch.com/blog/2026-11-13-dead-stock-90-day-rule.html

DeftMerch answers


**Short answer:** Dead stock is inventory that has not sold in 90 days and has no reason to sell in the next 90. Operators commonly budget 20 to 30 percent of inventory value a year for carrying costs: warehouse space, insurance, handling, and the cash tied up in goods that are not moving. The 90-day rule is simple: a SKU with no sales in 90 days gets a decision, markdown, bundle, or write-off, and the decision is made on a date, not when someone gets around to it.

## What dead stock actually costs

The obvious cost is the cash. A SKU that cost 5,000 dollars and has not sold is 5,000 dollars that is not a product that sells, not an ad, and not payroll. It sits in the warehouse, and the business pays for the space it occupies, the insurance on it, and the handling every time it is counted, moved, or picked around. Operators commonly budget 20 to 30 percent of inventory value a year for carrying costs, and that is the cost of the stock that moves. The stock that does not move costs the same, and returns nothing.

The less obvious cost is attention. A catalog with dead SKUs is a catalog that is harder to manage, harder to merchandise, and harder to search. The merchandising team spends time on products that do not sell, the warehouse spends time counting them, and the site spends crawl budget and customer attention on pages that do not convert. Dead stock is not just a warehouse problem. It is a catalog problem.

And the cost compounds. A SKU that is dead at 90 days is usually deader at 180, because the reason it did not sell, wrong product, wrong price, wrong season, wrong audience, does not fix itself with time. The value falls as the product ages, the season passes, and the next version arrives. Waiting does not improve the outcome. It only reduces the recovery.

## The 90-day rule, and how to run it

The rule is a date, not a feeling. Every SKU gets a last-sale date, and a SKU with no sale in 90 days goes on the review list. The review is a decision, not a discussion: markdown it, bundle it, move it to a clearance channel, or write it off. The decision is made in the review, and the action happens in the week after. A review that produces no decision is a meeting, not a rule.

Markdown in steps, not in one cut. A 20 percent cut first, then 30, then 50, each for two weeks, with the price change visible on the product page and in the email. A single deep cut trains customers to wait for the next one. A stepped markdown finds the price that moves the product, and it finds it before the product is worthless.

Bundle it with a product that sells, but only when the bundle makes sense. A slow accessory bundled with the product it belongs to is a genuine offer. A slow product bundled with an unrelated bestseller is a discount in disguise, and the customer learns that the bestseller comes with a free item they did not want. The bundle should solve the customer's problem, not the warehouse's.

## What not to do

Do not keep dead stock because it might sell next season. It might, and the season is six months away, and the carrying cost for six months is more than the margin on the sale. If the product is seasonal, the decision is to hold it deliberately, with a date, a quantity, and a plan, not to leave it on the shelf and hope. Hope is not a merchandising strategy.

Do not hide it. A SKU that is out of stock on the site but in stock in the warehouse is a lie the business tells itself, and the lie costs the sale when a customer asks for it and the answer is a week of checking. Mark it down, mark it as clearance, and let it go. A clearanced SKU is a decision. A hidden SKU is a postponement.

And do not reorder it. The most expensive dead stock is the second order of a product that did not sell the first time, placed because the supplier offered a discount, or because the buyer liked it, or because the system reordered automatically. The reorder point should be zero for a SKU with no sales in 90 days, and the system should need a human to override it, not a human to stop it.

Related reading on this site: [Your return rate is a margin problem: the numbers that decide the policy](https://deftmerch.com/blog/2026-11-12-return-rate-margin-policy.md), [Checkout extensibility: what Shopify Plus can change now that checkout.liquid is dead](https://deftmerch.com/blog/2026-11-12-shopify-checkout-extensibility-plus.md), and [What should a store do with a product page that gets traffic but no sales?](https://deftmerch.com/blog/2026-11-11-product-page-traffic-no-sales.md).

## Frequently asked questions

### What is dead stock?

Dead stock is inventory that has not sold in 90 days and has no reason to sell in the next 90. It is different from slow stock, which sells occasionally. Dead stock does not sell, and the carrying cost continues whether it sells or not.

### What does it cost to hold dead stock?

Operators commonly budget 20 to 30 percent of inventory value a year for carrying costs: warehouse space, insurance, handling, and the cash tied up in the goods. A SKU that cost 5,000 dollars and never sells costs 1,000 to 1,500 dollars a year to hold, and returns nothing.

### How does the 90-day rule work?

Every SKU gets a last-sale date. A SKU with no sale in 90 days goes on the review list, and the review produces a decision: markdown, bundle, move to clearance, or write off. The decision is made on a date, not when someone gets around to it.

### Should I bundle dead stock with bestsellers?

Only when the bundle makes sense for the customer, such as a slow accessory with the product it belongs to. Bundling an unrelated slow product with a bestseller is a discount in disguise, and it teaches customers that the bestseller comes with something they did not want.