Dead stock isn't dramatic. There's no fire, no theft, no broken refrigerator. It is just three boxes of lotion no-one is buying, slowly absorbing the cash that should be turning into sukari, ifu and umuceri. In our shops, we've found that 8 to 15 percent of inventory value is dead. Here is how to find it and what to do about it.
What 'dead stock' actually means
Dead stock isn't 'old stock.' Some old stock is fine — rice, salt, cleaning supplies — they don't expire and they sell, eventually. Dead stock is inventory you bought, paid for, and has not moved in 60 days. The cash is frozen. The shelf space is wasted. And every day you keep it, the chance of selling it gets a little smaller.
In Rwandan retail, most products have a natural cycle of 7–30 days. If something has not moved in 60 days, either the price is wrong, the placement is wrong, or your customers don't want it. Past 90 days, you should assume it is never going to sell at full price.
The 10-minute Sunday ritual
Once a week, ideally Sunday night when the shop is closing, run this exact sequence. With a notebook it is painful. With Iwange (or any decent POS), it takes less than ten minutes.
- Pull a sales report for the last 30 days, sorted by quantity sold, ascending.
- Scroll to any item with fewer than 3 sales — circle it. Look at when you last bought it. If it was over 60 days ago, it is dead.
- For each dead item, decide one of three actions: discount, bundle, return-to-supplier. Never just 'leave it on the shelf'.
“Dead stock is not a stocking mistake. It is a decision you keep making, every week you don't act on it.”
The three exits: discount, bundle, return
Discount: knock 20–30% off and put a small handwritten sign on the shelf. The goal isn't margin, it's cash recovery. A product sold at cost is better than a product still sitting next year.
Bundle: tie the dead item to a fast-mover. 'Buy 2kg sugar, get this hand cream half price'. Customers feel like they're winning. You convert dead capital into a margin product sale.
Return: many wholesalers will take back unsold sealed product, especially if you buy from them regularly. Most shop owners don't ask. Ask. Worst case they say no.
A concrete example from one of our shops
A general shop in Remera ran this ritual for the first time in November. They found 12 dead products worth a combined 186,000 FRW. They discounted 7, bundled 4, returned 1. In three weeks, 9 of the 12 were gone. The 78,000 FRW recovered went straight into faster-moving cooking oil, which compounded. Three months later their monthly profit was up about 8% — sustained, not a one-off.
Iwange's Stock report flags any item that hasn't sold in the last 30, 60 or 90 days. We even sort it by capital trapped, so the worst offenders surface first. Most shops find their first round of dead stock within the first hour of using it.
You don't need new software to run this ritual. You need 10 minutes a week and the willingness to make three small decisions. Do it for one month. The bottom shelf will thank you — and so will your wallet.
Reported and written by the Iwange team in Kigali. We do not publish individual bylines — what gets printed here was observed at a counter and checked twice before it ran.