When the company stops making what you sell

An item that has stopped coming is a decision with a deadline, not a mystery. Get a date from the supplier's man, not a promise. Buy no more of the last stock than three months of your own sales. Tell the people who use it before the shelf is empty, and mark it so nobody orders it again.

How you find out, and why you are the last to know

Nobody phones a shop to say an item has been dropped. The company decides in an office, the depot runs down what it holds, and the salesman writes "next time" on your order because that is easier than a conversation. By the third short order there is a gap on the shelf and four regulars asking.

Rashid has sold one company's tea in the 400 g tin for nine years. At half past seven on a Tuesday morning the van pulls up and Kamran, the salesman, reads the order back. The tea is missing again. "Not in the depot right now," Kamran says, the same words as last time. Rashid asks when. "Soon." That word has now covered two months.

The problem is the question. "When is it coming?" invites a promise, and promises are free. Ask something he can only answer with a fact: "When did your depot last receive a load of it?" A depot that has had nothing for two months is not waiting for a late batch. The item is off the list, whether or not anybody told him.

If he does not know, ask him to check the depot's register on his next round. A date is worth keeping. Another "soon" is the answer anyway.

Buy the last of it, or let it end

Once you know it is finished, there is usually a window: the depot has some cartons, another wholesaler has a few, and somebody offers you "the last of it" at the old rate. Shopkeepers get this wrong in both directions.

Buying the remaining stock is right when three things are true: you can count what you sell in a normal month, not guess; the item keeps on the shelf longer than it will take you to sell it; and the shop can spare the money for that long.

It is wrong when you are really buying a year of stock for four households. That money earns nothing on your shelf while those four households find the replacement anyway, because they have to.

The rule of thumb is months of cover, not sentiment. Count your normal monthly sales, buy no more than three months' worth, and never more than the printed date allows. Let the rest go. Three months moves your regulars to a replacement and brings the money back.

Say the salesman offers you the last eight cartons

The last stock on offer: 8 cartons of 24 packs192 packs

Buy rate per packRs 210

Cost if you take all of itRs 40,320

What you sell in a normal month30 packs

How long that lot sits on your shelfOver 6 months

Your earning on the whole lot, at Rs 240 a packRs 5,760

The same Rs 40,320 in stock that sells out and is bought again every month, six times overRs 34,560

Three months of cover instead: 4 cartons, 96 packsRs 20,160

Look at the two earning rows. The lot makes Rs 5,760 over six months. The same money in stock that turns every month makes that six times over. That is the real cost of a "last chance" buy, and why a shelf full of a finished item looks like loyalty and behaves like dead stock.

Four cartons is what Rashid should take. Not eight, and not none.

Pricing the last cartons

Here is the part that costs shops more than the buying decision. The item is scarce now. The shop across the road has none. So the rate goes up by twenty rupees, quietly, because "they cannot get it anywhere else".

Do not do this to your regulars. The four households that buy the tea every week will notice first, and they will not read it as scarcity. They will read it as you charging your oldest customers more because you could. You earn Rs 20 a pack on perhaps a hundred packs, and in exchange a household that trusted your rate for nine years learns to check it, on every item, and a regular who checks your rate is halfway out of the door.

If your buying rate genuinely rose, because the last cartons came from a different wholesaler, say so once and out loud. "The company stopped it. I got the last few from elsewhere at Rs 30 more, so it is Rs 270 while it lasts." Then let people decide. Some will pay it. Some will move to the replacement early. Both are fine, because both were told.

Pricing the last cartons

✓Say this

• "The company stopped it. The last few cost me Rs 30 more, so it is Rs 270 while it lasts."
• "Same rate as always. I have about two months of it left."
• "When it finishes, this is the one I am moving to. Try it."

✕Not this

• A new rate on the shelf with no reason given
• One rate for regulars and a higher one for strangers
• "It is hard to get now" as the whole explanation for Rs 20 more

Finding the replacement properly

The gap on the shelf pulls at you. A salesman will fill it tomorrow with a full carton of something nobody in your street has tried, and that is where a small problem becomes a stock problem.

Test small. Take the smallest unit the wholesaler will sell you, of two candidates, not one. Put them side by side where the old item stood, at an honest rate. The customers who care will pick one up. The rest were buying tea, not that tin, and will take whatever you stock.

Then ask the right person. In every street one household used the old item more than anybody, and their opinion is worth more than the salesman's. Give them a pack of each and ask which is closer. That is not a favour, it is research, and it costs you two packs.

Only when one of the two has sold through on its own do you order a carton. The same care applies to any new line you bring in: the shelf decides, not the salesman.

Finding the replacement without a carton of regret

1. 1Two candidates, smallest unitsNever one. Buy a sleeve or a dozen of each, whatever the smallest lot is.
2. 2Side by side where the old item stoodHonest rate on both. The customers who care will pick one up on their own.
3. 3Ask the household that used it mostOne pack of each, and one question: which is closer?
4. 4Order a carton only after one sells throughThe shelf decides, not the salesman.

Tell them before the shelf is empty

A customer who reaches for the tin and finds a gap is disappointed. One told a week earlier, and shown what you are trying instead, has been looked after.

Tell the heaviest users first: the four households, and the one that buys every week before the one that buys every month. You have been writing their names for years.

The sentence is short and does not apologise. "The company has stopped this one. I have about two months of it. I am trying two others, and I would like you to tell me which is closer." That hands them a plan and a job, and people like both.

At six in the evening Nasreen comes in for her week's tea. Rashid puts the tin on the counter with two small packs beside it. "This one is finishing. Try these two at home and tell me which your family drinks." The following Tuesday she says the second is closer, and Rashid orders a carton of that one only.

The record, which is the part that saves you money

A shop that forgets it stopped stocking something orders it again in six months, through a different wholesaler, at a rate nobody checked, and it sits.

Six months later Saleem, who has helped in the shop for a year, writes the reorder list at nine at night. The tea is still on the product list, so he writes it down. Nobody told him, because nothing in the shop says it.

So mark it, wherever you keep stock. In a paper register, a line through the item and the word FINISHED, with the date and who told you. In Wasoolo, move the product into a folder named "Not coming again" so it drops out of the list you order from, with its buy rate and last stock count still on it. That last number tells whoever helps you how many are left without counting the shelf.

Keep the customers visible too. Put the households that bought it into a Wasoolo customer group with the item's name, so you know who to tell when the replacement arrives, and who used to buy it when someone asks a year on.

And write down the replacement's buy rate the day it arrives. A new item is where a quiet rate rise hides best, because there is no old number to compare against unless you make one.

When someone still asks a year later

Some items have a long tail. A year on, a customer who moved away and has come back still asks for the old tin by name.

Point them to the replacement, by name, and say why. "That one stopped. This is what the street moved to." Most people accept that in a sentence. The shop that hedges with "maybe I can get it" keeps the request alive for another year.

Say it is gone when it is gone. Do not promise to look. A clean no from a shop that then hands you something good is remembered far better than a maybe that never comes.

If you keep being asked and the replacement never quite took, look again at the supplier question. The item may be alive under a different wholesaler or pack size, and a second supplier is how you find out. Same rule: count the demand, buy months of cover, never a year's worth for four households.

Common questions

The salesman says the item is "coming back in a new pack". Should I wait?

Wait with a date, not without one. Ask the new pack size, the rate, and when his depot expects it. If he knows, it is real. If not, treat it as finished and start testing a replacement.

How do I count how much I sell if I have never tracked it?

Add up the quantity on your last three purchase bills for the item. That is what you sold, give or take what is on the shelf now. Guessing from memory usually comes out double, which is how shops end up with a year of stock.

Is it worth buying the last stock if the item is only a small seller?

Usually not. If it sells a few a month, the last stock is a favour to a handful of people and money out of your galla, the cash box, for a long time. Tell those people, point them to the replacement, and let it end.

A customer is angry that I raised the rate on the last cartons. What now?

Tell her the truth in one sentence: what you paid, and that it goes back to normal when the replacement arrives. If there was no real cost behind it, put it back today and say so. A regular who stops trusting your rates costs you every item she buys.

The replacement is cheaper to buy. Should I keep the old selling rate and earn more?

Not on a new item. Price it honestly from its own buy rate, because customers compare it to the old one, and a replacement that feels expensive will not get tried. Once people ask for it by name, it is a normal item with a normal rate decision.

Should I tell the supplier I am unhappy that nobody told me?

Yes, once, and calmly. "Tell me when something is being dropped, not when the shelf is empty." Most salesmen will honour it, because a shop with warning keeps ordering the replacement from them. Do not punish him for a decision made far above him.