10 Inventory Planning Mistakes to Stop Making in 2025 (and What to Do Instead)
A new year calls for reflection—and if you’re running a retail business, your mind might be buzzing with everything that happened over the last 12 months. From unexpected sales spikes to costly inventory misses, this past year likely brought challenges, lessons, and opportunities for change.
As we set our sights on 2025, the Boon team is doing its own reflecting. We’ve rounded up the most common inventory planning mistakes we’ve seen across fast-growth brands—and how to break these habits for good.
If you recognize yourself in any of these, you’re not alone…and you’re not stuck. Fresh year, fresh start.
10 Inventory Planning Mistakes to Stop Making in 2025 (and What to Do Instead)
Not demand planning at all
If your past year was filled with recurring out-of-stocks, unproductive inventory, or general SKU chaos, the root cause is likely the same: no demand planning process.
Many early-stage brands try to stretch their budget by assigning demand planning to someone who’s analytical but not trained in inventory management. The result is forecasting based only on past sales—without factoring in seasonality, vendor lead times, or SKU-level velocity.
In 2025, build (or borrow!) a real demand planning process.
It will save you cash, prevent operational fires, and elevate your growth trajectory.2. Buying inventory too generally or on instinct
Treating every SKU the same is one of the fastest paths to both out-of-stocks and excess inventory.
Your top sellers need a different strategy than slower-moving styles or experimental items. Without SKU-level planning, you’ll overspend where you shouldn’t and underspend where you must.
Instead: analyze your assortment from multiple angles—category, attribute, size, color, channel—and use those insights to fuel your winners and reduce inventory drag.
3. Expecting software to do everything for you
Tech is helpful, but it’s not magic. Forecasting software provides data—but humans make decisions.
Many platforms generate recommendations that look scientific but don’t account for things like promo plans, marketing pushes, product lifecycle, or unexpected trend shifts.
We’ve had countless clients come to us after feeling let down by software alone. Once paired with a planner who can interpret the numbers, the results are night-and-day.
Whatever system you’re using for product planning and tracking, an experienced human is still necessary for working with it, understanding the outputs and thinking critically about suggested sales and inventory data before you spend money on inventory.
4. Failing to look at the business holistically
Planning by category alone means you miss critical insights at the total-business level.
This often results in:
too many styles
overspending on raw materials
no visibility into margin opportunities
cannibalization across categories
A holistic view allows you to balance your assortment, maximize margin, and ensure your inventory aligns with your true sales potential.
5. Expanding into a new sales channel without a strategy
A new sales channel means new customer behavior, new velocity patterns, and new risk.
Brands often assume their direct-to-consumer inventory strategy will work for wholesale or retail partnerships—but these channels behave very differently.
Before launching a new channel, get clear on:
expected sell-through
required presentation minimums
return structures
shipping timelines
If expert help is an option—take it. It pays for itself in avoided mistakes.
6. Offering too many variations
More SKUs ≠ more sales.
Color, size, and style proliferation is one of the biggest causes of overstock. More options means more inventory dollars tied up—and slower overall velocity.
Start with fewer, highly productive variations. Prove demand first; expand second.
7. Not implementing a structured SKU naming convention
Messy SKU names = messy data.
If you change naming conventions midstream or rely on creative, inconsistent descriptions, analyzing sales and inventory performance becomes nearly impossible.
A clean SKU system means:
easier reporting
better historical comparisons
fewer data errors
faster decision-making
It’s small but powerful.
Two essential demand planning steps that are frequently overlooked and underestimated - purposefully implementing a sku naming convention you can stick with and taking the time to categorize and attribute every item in your assortment. Without these data points - analyzing performance and strategizing for the future are basically impossible.
8. Not taking product coding seriously
Proper categorization and attribution are the backbone of meaningful analysis.
Without structured categories and attributes, you can’t:
slice data accurately
identify trends
spot underperformers
optimize raw materials
measure productivity
Brands with many SKUs must implement category hierarchies and attributes (color, size, flavor, silhouette, use case) to make smart assortment decisions.
9. Being honest about your team’s capabilities:
Demand planning is a specialty—not an “add-on duty.”
It’s common for founders and early hires to improvise, but forecasting is too high-stakes to wing. Inventory is your biggest investment, and mistakes can take months—or years—to unwind.
Fractional support gives you:
expert forecasting
actionable reporting
strategic oversight
training for internal teams
…without the cost or risk of a full-time hire.
10. Not providing coverage during turnover or leave
When a planner leaves or goes on parental leave—and the work gets absorbed by an already-maxed team—important processes slip. Fast.
This leads to:
missed forecasts
out-of-stock periods
overbuying
stalled merchandising cycles
lost profit
Short-term fractional support bridges the gap and keeps your business running smoothly until the team is fully resourced again.
Ready to build better inventory habits in 2025?
If any of these mistakes hit a little close to home, now is the perfect time to reset your approach and put scalable systems in place.
Your inventory has the power to fuel growth or restrict it—and the right partner makes all the difference.
If you’d like help strengthening your demand planning, building tools, or training your team, the Boon experts are here for you. Book a call.
Let’s make 2025 your most profitable year yet.
