Why I Purposely Oversold Stock: Unconventional ecommerce inventory lessons

4 July

I sold products I didn’t have in stock. On purpose.

It sounds like the first step to ruining a brand. Most eCommerce advice tells you to avoid stockouts at all costs. They say it kills customer trust and sends buyers straight to your competitors. They are not entirely wrong. But they are not entirely right, either.

When I was scaling Gearbunch, we hit a point where demand for our best-sellers consistently outstripped our supply. We had a choice. We could mark the product as “Sold Out” and lose thousands of sales. Or we could take the money, tell the customer exactly when their order would ship, and manage the process tightly.

We chose the second option. It was one of the most stressful but valuable ecommerce inventory lessons I ever learned. It forced us to master our operations, communication, and forecasting in a way that playing it safe never would have.

The unconventional ecommerce inventory lessons from overselling

The decision to oversell wasn’t made lightly. It started with one of our best-selling legging designs. We’d just sold through a 2,000-unit order in three weeks, and our next shipment of 3,000 units was still eight weeks away. The ads were converting at a 4.5x ROAS. Turning them off felt like throwing money away.

Our logic was simple. We believed the opportunity cost of lost sales was higher than the operational cost of managing backorders. We were betting that our customers would be willing to wait if we were completely transparent about it.

The immediate challenge was operational. How do you track these orders? How do you ensure the fulfillment team doesn’t get confused? How do you handle the inevitable “where is my order?” emails? We knew we were creating a customer service headache. We also knew that if we got it right, we could fund our next, larger purchase order with cash we already had in the bank. This was a huge incentive. We were essentially using pre-sales to de-risk our inventory investment.

We started by overselling by a capped amount, usually 25% of the incoming stock number. So for that 3,000-unit shipment, we’d open up 750 units for pre-sale. This gave us a buffer in case of production issues. The strategy paid off, and the results we saw gave us the confidence to apply it to other products. It’s an unconventional approach, but some of our results for clients come from thinking outside the standard playbook.

Mastering backorders and pre-sales for ecommerce growth

Running a backorder or pre-sale system is not something you can do casually. It requires robust systems. If you just let orders pile up without a plan, you will destroy your brand’s reputation.

First, we needed a way to flag these orders within Shopify. We used a combination of product tags and order tags. Any product available for pre-order was tagged ‘preorder’ in the backend. When an order containing one of these products came through, a Shopify Flow automation would tag the order with ‘PREORDER-WAITING’. This allowed our customer service team to quickly filter and identify these customers.

We also had to be explicit on the product page. We changed the “Add to Cart” button to “Pre-Order Now”. Directly below it, in bold, we put “Ships on or before [Date]”. This date was always our supplier’s promised delivery date plus a two-week buffer. Never promise the best-case scenario. Always promise the realistic one.

Supplier relationships became more important than ever. We needed weekly updates on production progress. We needed to know the moment a potential delay came up. Clear and constant communication with our suppliers was non-negotiable. If they couldn’t provide that, we couldn’t offer their products for pre-sale.

Choosing the right tools for backorder management

You can manage this manually with tags in Shopify, but it gets complicated fast. As we scaled, we relied on specific apps to automate the process.

Apps like ‘Pre-Order Now’ or ‘Pre-Order Globale’ on the Shopify App Store are good starting points. They handle changing the add-to-cart button, displaying messaging, and sometimes even tagging orders. We found these worked for single-product stores or simple catalogues.

For Gearbunch, with hundreds of SKUs, we ended up building a more custom solution integrated with our inventory management software. This allowed us to set pre-order limits on a per-variant basis and automatically switch the product back to “in stock” status when the inventory arrived. An off-the-shelf solution is fine to start. But as you grow, you may find the lack of flexibility holds you back. The key is a system that supports your email marketing and customer service workflows without manual workarounds.

Transparent communication: A crucial ecommerce inventory lesson

If you take only one thing from this post, let it be this. You can only oversell if you are obsessively transparent with your customers. Any hint of deception will backfire.

Our communication strategy had three pillars: before, during, and after the purchase.

Before: The product page was crystal clear. We used a bold headline like “This is a Pre-Order Item”. We stated the expected shipping date. We added a small FAQ section on the product page explaining what a pre-order meant and how cancellations worked.

During: The moment they purchased, the communication continued. The order confirmation email had a custom subject line: “Your Gearbunch Pre-Order Confirmation (#12345)”. The email body reiterated the expected shipping date. We removed any generic “Your order will ship in 1-2 business days” language.

After: This is where most brands fail. They take the money and then go silent until the item ships weeks later. We built an automated email flow to keep customers warm. One week after their order, they’d get an email saying, “Just a quick update on your pre-order…”. It contained no new information, but it reassured them they hadn’t been forgotten. This single email cut our “where is my order?” tickets by over 40%.

Automating updates with Klaviyo

We used Klaviyo to manage all our pre-order communications. It was the only way to do it at scale. Our Klaviyo expert team would be the first to tell you that generic flows won’t work here, and we often find the issues in a Klaviyo Audit are due to these generic approaches.

We built a specific Klaviyo flow triggered by the ‘PREORDER-WAITING’ tag in Shopify. 1. Immediate Confirmation: Fired right after purchase. It confirmed the order, reiterated the ETA, and linked to our pre-order FAQ page. 2. Mid-Wait Update: Fired 10 days after purchase if the order hadn’t been fulfilled. It was a simple “we’re still on track” message. We personalised it with their name and the product they ordered. 3. Delay Notification: This was a manual-send email, but it was crucial. If our supplier notified us of a delay, we immediately emailed every single affected customer. We explained the reason for the delay, gave them a new ETA, and offered a 10% discount code for a future purchase. Honesty is the only policy here.

This level of communication turns a potentially negative experience into a trust-building one.

Mitigating risks: Avoiding common inventory management mistakes

Overselling is not a risk-free strategy. You are making a promise to your customers, and if you break it, you damage your reputation. We learned to build contingency plans for everything that could go wrong.

The biggest risk is a supplier delay. It will happen. We learned to build a two-week buffer into any date we communicated to customers. If the supplier said 1 June, we told customers 15 June. If the stock arrived early, great. We under-promised and over-delivered. This simple buffer saved us from customer backlash countless times.

You also need a clear policy for cancellations. Some customers will not be willing to wait, and that is their right. We made it easy to cancel. Our policy was a no-questions-asked full refund at any point before the item shipped. Trying to lock customers into a pre-order is a short-sighted strategy. The small amount of revenue you save is not worth the negative reviews and chargebacks.

Cash flow is another consideration. You receive the cash upfront, which is great. But you also have a future liability. You can’t spend all that cash, because you need to be able to issue refunds. We kept a portion of pre-order revenue aside, roughly 15%, specifically to cover potential cancellations. This is one of those Harsh Ecommerce Profitability Lessons Learnt that you only learn by doing.

Finally, check your legal obligations. In Australia, the ACCC has clear rules about accepting payment for goods you cannot supply within a reasonable timeframe. Being transparent about the pre-order status and providing accurate shipping estimates is not just good practice, it’s a legal requirement. I recommend reviewing the ACCC guidelines on consumer rights to ensure you are compliant.

Future planning: Leveraging oversell data for ecommerce inventory lessons

This is where overselling shifts from a tactic to a strategy. The data you gather from a successful pre-sale campaign is incredibly valuable for future planning. It’s the purest signal of market demand you can get.

Instead of guessing how many units to order, we knew. If we made 500 units available for pre-sale and they sold out in a week, we knew the demand was real and deep. Our next purchase order could be for 5,000 units instead of a more conservative 2,000. This allowed us to scale winning products much faster.

It also helped us test new designs with minimal risk. We could release a new legging design as a pre-order with a small, capped number of available slots. If it sold out, we knew we had a winner and could proceed with a full production run. If it didn’t, we cancelled the few orders we had and scrapped the design, having spent zero dollars on inventory.

This data directly informed our purchasing and reduced our holding costs. We weren’t tying up capital in stock that might not sell. We were ordering based on proven demand. This is a core part of the playbook I used when I was focused on What I Learnt Scaling Gearbunch: An 8-Figure eCommerce Journey. It turns your inventory from a cost centre into a data-driven growth lever.

These ecommerce inventory lessons were hard-won. They require operational discipline and a commitment to transparency. But when managed correctly, intentionally overselling can be a powerful tool to manage cash flow, validate demand, and scale your brand faster.