I used to run my stores on gut feel. And this is Part 1 of a three-part series on exactly why that was costing me and what I did about it.

And honestly? My gut was pretty good. Years of experience, thousands of buying decisions, a real sense of what my customers wanted. I trusted it.

But gut feel without data is still a guessing game. And when your inventory is your single largest investment, guessing is expensive. I know because I did it, and I paid for it in ways I didn’t even fully see until later.

That’s why I want to talk about Open to Buy today. Not as a theory. Not as a spreadsheet exercise. As the thing that changed how I ran my stores and what I wish I’d had from day one.

I recently sat down with Dana Connell, retail professor at Columbia College Chicago and former buyer for Marshall Field’s and Macy’s, for a live Inventory Engine Workshop. Dana has been doing Open to Buy every single Monday for 43 years. She knows this inside and out, and she has a gift for making it make sense.

Keep reading. Because if money ever feels like it’s flowing through your store without a clear picture of where it goes, this one is for you.

Open to Buy Is Your Inventory Budget: Nothing More, Nothing Less

I want to start here because I know the phrase “Open to Buy” can feel intimidating. It sounds technical. It sounds like something only big corporate buyers do.

Dana has a way of cutting right through that.

She says: think about going to the grocery store with $20. You have a list. You know what you need. You’re not wandering the aisles picking up whatever looks appealing until your cart overflows and your $20 is gone and you still don’t have yogurt. You have a plan.

Open to Buy is that plan for your store. It tells you exactly how much you can spend on inventory based on what you’ve already sold and what you’re projecting to sell. It gives you a number before you walk into the market, before you sit down with a sales rep, before you place a single order.

Without it, you’re wandering. And wandering at a trade show is a very expensive way to spend a day.

Dana worked with one of our clients, a duo who started using Open to Buy before their market trip and they came up with a safe word. When one of them started drifting toward something that wasn’t on the plan, one of them would just say “Dana.” That was it. Back on track.

That’s what a clear budget does. It makes every decision easier because you already know the answer before the question gets asked.

The lesson: Open to Buy is not complicated. It is a planned strategy that tells you what to buy, how much to spend, and when to stop. It removes emotion from the equation and believe me, there is a lot of emotion on a trade show floor.

Your Inventory Is Trapped Wealth and It’s Time to Free It

This is the reframe I want you to carry with you.

The inventory sitting on your shelves right now is not just products. It is money. Every piece that isn’t selling is cash that’s stuck, cash that can’t be reinvested, can’t pay your bills, can’t fund your next buy.

Our financial planner called it trapped wealth, and when I heard that phrase it genuinely stopped me. Because I had never thought of it that way. I thought of old inventory as a problem to deal with eventually. What it actually is, is money waiting to be released.

Open to Buy is how you release it. It’s how you see clearly enough to mark things down before it’s too late, to get that cash back, and to put it into a product that will actually sell.

I’ll give you a real example. A women’s clothing store brings in bathing suits in January because their customers go on vacation. Smart. But if those suits aren’t moving and you’re not marking them down until July, you’ve lost five or six months of opportunity. The cash that was sitting in those suits could have been turned over, reinvested, and working for you again. Instead it was just sitting there, getting staler by the week.

That is not a product problem. That is an inventory management problem. And Open to Buy solves it.

Take this with you: Look at what’s been sitting on your shelves for more than 90 days. That is your trapped wealth. That is where you start.

The Three Numbers That Tell You Everything

I want you to think of your inventory as an ecosystem. Open to Buy is at the center, and everything else revolves around it. There are three numbers I pay close attention to, and when all three are healthy, your store runs well. When even one is off, you feel it.

Inventory turn is your overall pace and how fast you’re moving through your inventory. A healthy turn means your product is selling and your cash is moving. A slow turn means you’re sitting on stock longer than you should be.

Stock-to-sales ratio tells you how much inventory you’re carrying compared to what you’re actually selling. Too high, and your cash is buried in the product. Too low, and you’re leaving sales on the table because you don’t have enough.

Newness in 90 days is exactly what it sounds like how much fresh product have you brought in over the last three months. Your customers walk in and the first thing they want to know is what’s new. If the answer is nothing, they leave. And they stop coming back as often, because there’s no reason to.

These three numbers are not separate things. They work together. When your turn is slow, it usually means your stock-to-sales ratio is too high and your newness is suffering. Fix one and you start to fix all three. Ignore one and you feel it everywhere.

The lesson: You don’t need to track a hundred numbers. You need these three. They tell the story of whether your inventory ecosystem is healthy or not.

Running on Gut Feel Will Only Take You So Far

I want to be clear about something. Your instincts matter. The years you’ve spent in your store, knowing your customers, knowing your market, that knowledge is real and valuable.

But instincts without data are still guessing. And there’s a pattern I’ve seen over and over again, including in myself, that I want you to watch out for.

I had a sales rep I genuinely liked. A great person, fun to work with, I always looked forward to seeing them at the market. And I kept buying more from them not because the numbers said so, but because I enjoyed the relationship.

The product didn’t sell.

Meanwhile, I had another vendor who sold socks. Not glamorous. Honestly, it’s a little boring. But those socks sold consistently, every single time. If I had been looking at my data instead of my feelings, I would have bought more socks and less of the stuff that was filling up my shelves.

Dana says it this way to her students: show me the data. You can feel things, you can think things, but when you go to market you need to be rooted in a strategy, not a mood.

That strategy is Open to Buy.

The lesson: Your instincts are an asset. But they need to be backed up by numbers. Open to Buy gives you the data that makes your experience even more powerful.

You Are a Brand, and Your Inventory Tells That Story

One more thing before I let you go.

Your store is not just a store. You are a brand. Your customers walk in with an expectation of how they’ll feel, what they’ll find, what the experience will be. Your inventory is a core part of that promise.

When your inventory is fresh, turning, and aligned with who your customer is, your store feels alive. When it’s stale, overstuffed, and disconnected from what they actually want, they feel that too. They may not say it out loud, but they feel it.

We talk at Retail Mavens about building your world. A world that your customers want to come back to, not just for the product, but for how it feels to be there. Your inventory is what keeps that world feeling real and alive. Open to Buy is how you protect it.

Take this with you: Your inventory is a financial tool and a brand statement at the same time. Manage it with both in mind.

Your Millie Moment

You just learned the foundation of your Inventory Engine. Now let’s put it to work.

Step 1: Pull up your inventory this week and find everything that has been sitting for more than 90 days. Write it down. This is your trapped wealth list.

Step 2: Look at those three numbers, your inventory turn, your stock-to-sales ratio, and your newness in 90 days. Even a rough sense of where you stand is a starting point. You can’t fix what you haven’t looked at.

Step 3: Pick one item or one category from your trapped wealth list and make a decision on it today. Mark it down, move it, promote it. Get that cash moving.

Step 4: Before your next market trip or vendor order, write down your budget first. Just the number. How much can you actually spend? That number is the beginning of your Open to Buy.

Resources & Links

💚 Remember: Your inventory is not just product on shelves. It is wealth in progress. Manage it like the investment it is and watch what happens to your store.

This is Part 1 of a three-part series on building your Inventory Engine. We covered the foundation today, what Open to Buy is, why it matters, and the three numbers that run your inventory ecosystem. In Part 2, Dana and I go deeper into how to actually build your Open to Buy, what to do when your numbers are off, and how to use this system to make smarter buying decisions starting at your next market trip. Part 2 is coming soon. You won’t want to miss it.