Retailers should make greater use of downstream signals, particularly post purchases, to improve stock efficiency and reduce markdown risk, explains Rory O’Connor, CEO and Founder of Scurri
Rory O’Connor, CEO and Founder of Scurri
Inventory decisions are still largely disconnected from what actually happens after the point of purchase, as goods move through delivery networks and across borders or get returned, refurbished, resold or written off. Separately, they are seen simply as the cost of doing business the way we work now, but all friction and delay add up to lower margins, made worse for companies that are dealing with tighter margins, volatile demand and rising return rates.
The missed opportunity is fulfilment, a live, data-rich signal that should actively influence how inventory is allocated, priced and protected.
The missing half of the inventory picture
Retailers are already sitting on a vast amount of post-purchase data, but most of it is trapped in operational silos - carrier performance dashboards, customer service systems, returns portals and finance workflows. As a result, inventory teams rarely see the downstream signals that directly affect stock efficiency and markdown risk.
For instance, return velocity by SKU and region. Two products with identical sell-through can behave very differently once shipped. One may return quickly and resell cleanly within the original season. Another may take weeks to come back, miss its resale window and require deep discounting or write-off. In inventory terms, these products are not the same but are treated as such.
The same is true of refund latency. Slow refunds affect repurchase intent, inflate customer service costs and increase the likelihood of secondary returns. But they also distort inventory availability by delaying when returned stock can be confidently reintroduced into sellable pools. When refund and resale timelines are invisible to inventory planning, safety stock increases automatically, all of which ties up working capital.
Cross-border friction and hidden stock traps
Nowhere is the gap between fulfilment reality and inventory planning more costly than in cross-border commerce. Blockages on route, customs delays, carrier constraints and regulatory friction can commit inventory in transit or in return limbo for weeks. From the perspective of central inventory systems, that stock still exists but it is effectively unusable. The result is phantom availability that inflates on-hand figures while increasing the risk of stockouts elsewhere.
Retailers that fail to account for these downstream frictions often respond by over allocating inventory to high-risk routes or accelerating markdowns prematurely to compensate for perceived demand weakness. However, it is not demand that is the problem, it is post-purchase drag.
When fulfilment data is analysed at route, carrier and region level, inventory teams can make more precise allocation decisions, for instance, diverting stock away from high-friction corridors, adjusting cross-border assortments or prioritising domestic fulfilment for SKUs sensitive to return.
Returns, refurbishment and the true cost of reversibility
Returns are often framed as a customer experience challenge or a logistics burden. But they are also one of the most powerful, and underused, inventory signals available.
Refurbishment success rates, for example, vary dramatically by product category, packaging type and fulfilment method. A returned item that can be inspected, repackaged and resold within days behaves very differently to one that requires manual intervention, repacking or disposal. Yet these outcomes are rarely fed back into buying or ranging decisions.
The same applies to packaging waste and write-offs. Products that suffer high damage rates in transit may look profitable at gross margin level but quietly destroy value downstream. When those signals are ignored, inventory planning reinforces failure by ordering more of the SKUs that generate the most friction.
By integrating post-purchase outcomes into inventory logic, retailers can identify which products genuinely support circularity, which can sustain flexible fulfilment models like ship-from-store and which should be constrained or redesigned.
From static stock to dynamic inventory strategy
The strategic shift now underway is subtle but profound. Inventory can no longer be treated as static units waiting to be sold. It must be understood as a dynamic system, constantly reshaped by delivery performance, return behaviour, refund speed and recovery potential.
This is where fulfilment becomes a strategic control point. Not because it replaces merchandising or planning, but because it reveals the real-world consequences of inventory decisions at speed and at scale.
Retailers that expose downstream signals can move faster and with greater confidence: adjusting allocations mid-season, delaying markdowns where resale velocity is strong or pulling back on SKUs that appear healthy pre-purchase but leak value post-purchase.
The competitive edge hiding in plain sight
Inventory strategy in the future will be defined by better forecasting as well as better feedback loops. As post-purchase data becomes more visible and actionable, fulfilment shifts from a back-office function to a strategic focus, to reveal where inventory is delivering on its promise or where it is quietly eroding margin.
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