Sell-Through Rate STR
Of the stock you brought in, the share you have already sold.
The fork, why two teams get different numbers
The denominator is the fork. Buyers and planners compute sell-through against
units RECEIVED (units sold ÷ units received in the period); store operations
against units AVAILABLE (beginning on-hand + receipts); and some vendors against
BEGINNING inventory only. On a product that is still receiving deliveries, "sold ÷
received" and "sold ÷ available" diverge widely. The period is a second fork:
weekly sell-through, season-to-date, and life-to-date answer different questions
and get quoted interchangeably.
The trap
Sell-through says nothing about MARGIN: a 90% sell-through driven by 50%-off markdowns is a clearance, not a hit, yet reads identically to a full-price sellout.
- The full trap, worked on a real export
- Every formula variant, spelled out
- The reconciliation anchor, what to tie it to and when to refuse
Reference: Retail merchandise-planning convention