How to track inventory at your retail partners

Every brand knows what is in its own warehouse. Very few know what is in stock on their retail partners’ webshops.

That second number is the one that decides your wholesale revenue. A product that is out of stock at the retailer cannot be bought, cannot be advertised and slowly drops down the category page.

This guide shows how to track inventory at your retail partners, by hand first, and when it makes sense to automate it.

Why your own inventory system is not enough

Inventory management software is built for your warehouse. It tracks what you received, what you shipped and what is left.

It stops at the loading dock. Once a pallet leaves for a retailer, your system marks it as sold. From that moment you are blind to what happens to it.

The gap is large. In a September 2026 scan of 5,169 hero products across online retailers, only about 1 in 4 was buyable. For every 100 hero listings that could exist, 63 were carried and around 26 were in stock.

At one lighting brand, we checked every product showing as backordered at its retail partners. All of them were in the brand’s own warehouse. The stock existed. It had not been sold in.

Four terms to get right

• Listing. One product, at one retailer, in one market.
• Carried. The retailer lists the product at all.
• In stock. The listing can be bought today. Exclude made-to-order products, since they never show stock.
• Stock coverage. The share of your carried listings that are in stock. Measure it per partner, never only as an average.

The average is dangerous. The same brand can be 51% in stock at one retailer and 4% at the next. If you only look at the total, you never find the partner that is quietly losing you sales.

How to track it by hand

You can start this week with a spreadsheet.

1. Pick your hero products. Your top 30 to 100 SKUs by wholesale volume. The products you want in stock everywhere, all the time.
2. Pick your partners. Your top 10 to 20 online retailers. They usually carry most of your wholesale revenue.
3. Build a matrix. Products down the side. Partners across the top. One cell per listing.
4. Visit each product page and record one status per cell. In stock, out of stock, backordered with a date, or not carried.
5. Repeat weekly. Same day, same products, same partners. The trend matters more than any single week.
6. Calculate stock coverage per partner. In-stock listings divided by carried listings.

Set a target. 80% coverage on hero products is a good starting point. Every partner below it gets a call this week.

What to do with the gaps

A spreadsheet full of red cells does nothing on its own. Each gap needs an action.

• Out of stock, and you have stock. Send a restock proposal with exact quantities. This is the fastest money in wholesale.
• Not carried, but the partner sells your other products in that category. Pitch the listing with sales data from comparable partners.
• Backordered with a long date. Check if the partner’s order is stuck somewhere on your side.
• Out of stock, and you are out too. Tell the partner when stock lands, so they can order before it sells out again.

Retailers want this input. When our customers asked their retail partners whether to keep sending order proposals, 78% said keep them coming. See how to suggest the right quantities.

What it costs to do by hand

The manual version works. It is also slow.

In our study of our first customers, sales teams spent up to half their time on manual, ad hoc work like this. Checking partner websites. Comparing prices. Building one order suggestion by hand takes one to two hours.

Around 20 to 30 partners, the spreadsheet stops keeping up. The checks get skipped in busy weeks, which are exactly the weeks that matter.

When to automate

Automate when you see any of these:

• You have more than 20 active retail partners.
• Nobody on the team can say what is in stock at your top 10 partners today.
• Restock orders only happen when a partner calls you.
• Your sales team spends hours a week opening partner websites.

Atlo checks stock, price and range for your products at every online retail partner, every day. Then it turns the gaps into restock proposals your team can send. Brands we work with see wholesale lift by 12% on average and spend 50% less time on manual stock and price checks.

See your own stock coverage

We build a free report on your top products and your retail partners. You see stock coverage, out-of-stock listings and unrealized sales per partner.

Book a demo with a founder

Sources

Atlo market scan, September 2026, top 10% volume products, 5,169 SKUs. Atlo study of its first customers. Customer outcomes are averages across Atlo customers. All brands and retailers anonymised.