This page teaches how to decide which part of a retailer's own stock, already sitting inside its store network, the online channel may show as available and sell, for a retail buyer who has already received the purchase order and now has to plan how that stock is used across two channels at once. This lesson mainly teaches a decision: which units join a shared pool, and which stay reserved for the shop floor alone. This lesson starts once stock has already landed in Fairway Stores' own stores.
A retailer that treats every unit sitting in every store as automatically available to the online channel can sell the same last piece to two different customers at once, one walking into the shop and one clicking "buy" online, and then has to cancel one of the two sales. A retailer that goes the other way, keeping the online channel walled off from store stock entirely, ties up cash in stock that sits unsold on a shelf in one city while a customer in another city is turned away online with nothing to buy.
You need: to know Fairway Stores' own total stock position for a style across every store, and roughly how each store's own local sales pattern behaves. No specific earlier lesson in this course is required.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: the rule that decides whether a specific online order is fulfilled from a store's own shelf (Lesson 4.2), protecting the shareable pool once online demand is running (Lesson 4.3), and choosing between a nearby store and a central warehouse for a specific order (Lesson 4.4).
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Shared inventory pool | The part of a retailer's own store stock that is shown as available and sold through both the store and its online channel. |
| Store-committed stock | Stock physically in a store that the store needs to protect its own local sales, and that is not shared with the online channel. |
| Online channel | A retailer's own route to sell to a customer through its website or app, rather than through a physical shop. |
| Stockout | A situation where a store or a channel has no units of an item left to sell, though demand for it still exists. |
| Make to Order (MTO) | Production starts only after a specific buyer confirms a specific order. |
Not every unit a retailer holds in its stores is available to every channel at once. A retailer's own total stock for a style, once landed, splits into two parts: a shared inventory pool, which both the store and the online channel may sell against, and store-committed stock, which the store keeps back to protect its own local, walk-in sales. Sharing the whole total with the online channel risks a stockout at the shop counter that the store never saw coming; sharing none of it leaves the online channel showing "out of stock" while unsold stock still sits on a shelf across town.
| What can differ | The shapes you meet | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Export vs. domestic online customer | An export-facing online channel, shipping to customers outside Fairway Stores' own home market, may draw from a wider set of stores than a domestic online order, which a nearby store can fulfil faster | The size of a sensible shared pool depends on how far the resulting shipment has to travel, not only on how much stock a store holds |
| Make to Order vs. Make to Stock purchase behind the stock | A Make to Order purchase, like Fairway Stores' own order from Northline Apparel, arrives once and is not easily topped up mid-season; a Make to Stock line can be reordered, which allows a larger shared pool since a stockout is easier to correct | A retailer sharing MTO stock has to be more cautious with its shared pool than one sharing a reorderable MTS line |
| A fast-selling store vs. a slow-selling store | A high-footfall flagship store may sell through its own stock quickly on the shop floor alone, needing a smaller shared pool; a slower store can safely share a larger share of its own stock | Applying one shared-pool percentage to every store regardless of its own sales pattern under-protects the fast store and over-restricts the slow one |
| A single style vs. a whole assortment | A single style, such as Fairway Stores' own T-shirt, is split store by store; a full assortment repeats the same split hundreds of times across many styles at once | The method scales the same way, but a retailer with a full assortment needs a rule it can apply quickly, not a one-off manual judgement per style |
| Product families | The same shared-pool split applies whether the stock is apparel, socks and hosiery, knit-to-garment, terry and towels, or home textiles and bedding | A retailer new to omnichannel selling often starts with one product family, such as apparel, before extending the same split to others |
Fairway Stores buys 15,000 pieces of its own T-shirt from Northline Apparel, made to order at Delta Garments, landed at USD 3.70 per piece and priced at USD 19.90 in the shop. Once the stock lands across Fairway Stores' own stores, its buyer has to decide, store by store, how much of each store's own share of that stock the online channel may show as available. A flagship store receiving 1,200 pieces sells briskly on its own shop floor; a smaller store receiving 300 pieces sells more slowly and has more spare stock to offer online without risking its own shelf.
The buyer needs a repeatable way to size the shared pool, not a separate judgement call for every one of Fairway Stores' own stores every season.
The worked numberThe worked number shows why one fixed percentage does not fit every store: the flagship store, selling faster on its own shop floor, can only safely share about 17% of its stock with the online channel, while the smaller, slower-selling store can share 40% of the same style without risking a shop-floor stockout. Both figures come from the same method, subtracting each store's own expected local sales from its own stock on hand.
A common mistake is setting a single shared-pool percentage, such as "20% of every store's stock goes online," and applying it to every store in the network without checking each store's own actual selling speed. This flattens the fast-selling flagship store and the slow-selling smaller store into the same rule, which under-protects the flagship store's own shop floor and leaves the smaller store's own spare stock sitting unshared when it could safely be sold online. The cost shows up as a stockout at the flagship counter and unsold stock gathering markdown risk at the smaller store, both avoidable with a store-by-store calculation.
A retailer's stock sitting inside its stores is not automatically available to its online shop. Part of it has to stay on the shelf so walk-in customers are not turned away, and only the rest can be shown as available online. On Fairway Stores' own T-shirt, a fast-selling flagship store can only safely share about 17% of its stock, while a slower-selling smaller store can share 40% of the same style. Working out the shareable share store by store, from each store's own stock and its own expected sales, avoids both a stockout on the shop floor and stock sitting unsold and unshared elsewhere.
A colleague on Fairway Stores' own online team asks the buyer to raise the flagship store's shareable pool for the T-shirt from 200 to 500 pieces, to support a two-week online promotion. The facts in front of the buyer:
The request from the buyer's own inbox:
Should the buyer approve the request to raise the shareable pool to 500 pieces for the flagship store? Decide before you open the decision.
No, not at the full 500 pieces; the flagship store's own expected shop-floor sales of 1,000 pieces would be put at risk.
Two facts decide this. First, this lesson's own rule states that the shareable pool is stock on hand minus expected local sales, and 1,200 − 1,000 leaves only 200 pieces without risking the shop floor; raising it to 500 removes 300 pieces the flagship store's own shop floor is expected to need. Second, the promotion only runs two weeks, so a smaller, temporary increase, checked against how much of the 1,000-piece shop-floor expectation falls inside those two weeks, is the safer approach than a flat jump to 500 for the whole season.
Refusing any increase at all would also be wrong; a short, calculated increase during the promotion window may still be sensible. The point is that the number 500 was not checked against the flagship store's own expected shop-floor sales before being proposed.
The USD 4,860 figure is not a certainty, since not every expected shop-floor sale would necessarily be lost; some customers may simply wait or choose another style. It is, however, the scale of risk being weighed against the promotion's expected gain, which is why the shareable pool needs checking before it is raised, not adjusted after a stockout is already reported.
Use the T21-C04 Omnichannel inventory decision tool. For Fairway Stores' own T-shirt, enter each store's own stock on hand and its own expected local shop-floor sales for the remaining season; the sheet calculates the shareable pool available to the online channel and flags a request that would cut into a store's own expected shop-floor sales.
[Download the Omnichannel inventory decision tool](../../templates/T21-C04-omnichannel-inventory-decision-tool.xlsx)
1. Why is a retailer's total store-network stock not automatically available to its online channel?
2. A store holds 800 pieces of a style and expects to sell 650 of them on its own shop floor this season. What is its shareable pool?
3. Why might a flagship store need a lower shared-pool percentage than a smaller, slower-selling store carrying the same style?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shared inventory pool | مجمع المخزون المشترك | Pool de stock partagé | Paylaşılan stok havuzu | The part of a retailer's own store stock that is shown as available and sold through both the store and its online channel. |
| Store-committed stock | مخزون مخصص للمتجر | Stock réservé au magasin | Mağazaya ayrılmış stok | Stock physically in a store that the store needs to protect its own local sales, and that is not shared with the online channel. |
| Online channel | القناة الإلكترونية | Canal en ligne | Çevrimiçi kanal | A retailer's own route to sell to a customer through its website or app, rather than through a physical shop. |
| Stockout | نفاد المخزون | Rupture de stock | Stok tükenmesi | A situation where a store or a channel has no units of an item left to sell, though demand for it still exists. |
| Make to Order (MTO) | الإنتاج حسب الطلب | Fabrication sur commande (MTO) | Siparişe göre üretim (MTO) | Production starts only after a specific buyer confirms a specific order. |
You now know how to decide which stock a store network can share with the online channel. The next lesson turns that shared pool into a working rule: when a specific store is actually allowed to pick and ship an online order from its own shelf. Back to the course map