Safety stock
Also called Buffer stock, Cover
The inventory you hold on purpose to survive being wrong about demand or late on a run.
Safety stock exists because two things are uncertain at once: how fast you will sell, and when your next run will actually land. Either alone is manageable. Together they are why brands go out of stock in the same month they are sitting on too much of something else.
The useful way to express it is days of cover — how long current stock lasts at the current rate of sale — rather than a unit count, because a unit count means nothing without velocity. Six thousand units is comfortable for one SKU and a crisis for another.
Your real minimum is set by lead time, not by preference. If a run takes ten weeks from booking to delivered stock, you need more than ten weeks of cover on the shelf when you place it, or the decision has already been made for you.
NextBatch keeps this straight for you. Cost per unit, tolling tiers, yield and traceability all derive from the same plan you and your co-manufacturer share — so none of it is a number somebody typed twice.
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