What happens between the container arriving and the first sale?
Many importers finish a long journey — supplier search, negotiation, production, inspection, shipping, clearance — and only then discover the real work has started. Goods sitting in a warehouse are not revenue; they are frozen capital that becomes revenue through a specific chain of operations:
- Receiving and counting: matching quantities to the packing list before signing, photographing any damaged cartons.
- Goods-in inspection: opening a sample of cartons and comparing against the approved sample, not just counting boxes.
- Coding and put-away: tying every item to a SKU, a storage location and a batch number.
- Landed cost calculation: allocating every shipment cost across the sellable units.
- Listing: product page, images, description, price, available quantity.
- Operating: selling, picking, shipping, handling returns, and reordering at the right moment.
Most post-arrival losses happen in steps one and four: quantity discrepancies that are not documented in time, so the claim window closes, and pricing built on the factory price alone, so a margin appears to exist when it does not.
How do I build a SKU system that still makes sense a year later?
The SKU is the backbone of everything that follows. It should be short, logical and human-readable, and stay fixed for the life of the product. A simple pattern works well: category code, product code, colour, then size or capacity — for example MUG-THR-BLK-350.
- Never embed something that changes, like price or supplier, inside the SKU.
- Avoid ambiguous characters such as O and 0 or I and 1 to reduce manual entry errors.
- Give every separately sellable variant its own code: each colour, each size, each multipack.
- Keep the internal SKU separate from the global barcode; the first is yours, the second is a registered identifier in your company name.
- Never recycle a retired SKU for a new product — it corrupts the entire sales history.
What data does every item need in the inventory system?
| Field | Example | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| SKU | MUG-THR-BLK-350 | The key linking purchasing, stock and sales |
| Barcode (GTIN) | Registered to your company | Scanning in the warehouse and at point of sale |
| Bilingual description | Black thermal mug 350 ml | Appears on the store, invoice and waybill |
| Landed cost per unit | Updated with every shipment | The basis of real profit, not the factory price |
| Available and reserved quantity | 480 available · 25 reserved | Prevents overselling |
| Storage location | A-03-2 | Shortens picking time and cuts errors |
| Batch code and arrival date | B-2026-07 | Traceability, recalls and first-in-first-out |
| Lead time in days | 75 days | A core input to the reorder point |
| Reorder point | 1,150 units | An automatic alert before stockout, not after |
| Dimensions and weight | 12×9×11 cm · 380 g | Shipping cost and storage fee calculations |
| Supplier and PO number | Factory A · PO-2026-118 | Traces any defect back to its source |
| Item status | Active / discontinued | Stops sales of an item no longer available |
How do I calculate the true cost per unit?
The factory price is not your cost. Landed cost gathers everything paid until the product is sellable in your warehouse:
- Factory unit price.
- Domestic transport in China plus export and handling charges.
- International freight and insurance.
- Duties and non-recoverable taxes.
- Destination handling, clearance and delivery to your warehouse.
- Any local relabeling or repacking.
- Inspection fees where applicable.
Then the decisive rule: divide the total by the units you can actually sell, not by the quantity ordered. If 1,000 mugs arrive and 30 are broken, divide by 970. When one container holds several products, allocate freight by volume or weight — whichever actually drives the cost — rather than splitting it evenly across SKUs.
True margin still needs the selling costs deducted afterwards: marketplace commission, payment fees, delivery to the customer, outbound packaging and an expected return rate. Plenty of SKUs that look profitable at unit level turn break-even or negative once those last two lines are included.
When should I reorder so stock never runs out?
One simple formula rescues a lot of lost sales:
Reorder point = (average daily sales × lead time in days) + safety stock
For example: selling 12 units a day with a full lead time of 75 days from issuing the purchase order to goods entering the warehouse means you need 900 units just to cover the wait. Add safety stock for demand variability and shipping delay — say 250 units — and the reorder point becomes 1,150. The next order is placed when the balance falls to 1,150, not when it approaches zero.
Note that lead time is not production time alone: count sample approval, production, inspection, ocean booking, sailing, clearance and inland delivery. Then raise safety stock ahead of Chinese New Year and peak season, because lead time itself stretches during those windows.
How do I avoid overselling across multiple channels?
Selling on your own store, one or two marketplaces and a physical outlet at the same time means the same balance is exposed in four places. First rule: one source of truth. A single system holds the real balance, and every channel reads from and writes to it, never the reverse.
- Reserve quantity the moment an order is created, not when it ships, so a unit is never sold twice.
- Hold a small buffer per channel on fast movers to absorb sync lag.
- Make item status propagate automatically: a discontinued item disappears everywhere at once.
- Keep returned stock separate from sellable stock until it is inspected and reclassified.
- Run rolling cycle counts on high-value items instead of one disruptive annual stocktake.
Which metrics should I watch monthly?
- Days of cover = current stock ÷ average daily sales. It tells you how many days remain before stockout.
- Inventory turnover: how many times stock sold through in the period. A falling number means sleeping capital.
- Stockout rate: how many days a wanted item was unavailable. Every such day is lost sales and worse marketplace ranking.
- Dead stock share: what has not moved in 90 or 180 days. Discount or bundle it early rather than late.
- Unit margin after landed cost and after selling commissions and returns.
- Inventory accuracy: how closely book balance matches physical count. When it drops, every metric above becomes unreliable.
Operational checklist for the first container
- Did you match quantities to the packing list before signing for receipt?
- Did you photograph damaged cartons and document discrepancies immediately?
- Did you open a random sample and compare it against the approved sample?
- Was every item entered with a SKU, location and batch before going live on the store?
- Was landed cost updated after all shipment invoices closed?
- Are reorder point and safety stock set for each SKU?
- Is available quantity fed to all sales channels from a single source?
- Is there a defined returns process: where stock is held, who inspects it, when it resells?
Practical takeaway
Successful importing does not end at the warehouse door. A product landed at an excellent price can still lose money if its cost is calculated from the factory price alone, if it runs out at the peak of its season because nobody set a reorder point, or if the same unit sells twice because balances were never synced. Four things make the difference: stable coding, complete item data, landed cost divided by sellable units, and a reorder point built on a realistic lead time.
At ALSHUMUL we work at both ends of the chain: sourcing, inspection and shipping out of China, then the systems and online stores that turn an arriving container into disciplined stock and measurable sales — because the two ends are really one process, not two.
