754. How 7-Figure Product Businesses Manage Inventory for Predictable Growth

If your inventory decisions are based on what's running low, what sold last week, or what you suddenly realize you need next month, your business is not being led, it's being reacted to. And if your product business feels reactive right now, it's because it is. So today I'm going to show you why that's happening, what it's costing you, and how to start planning your product business backwards so you can lead it instead of constantly catching up to it. Hi, I'm Jacqueline Snyder, and this is the Product Boss Podcast. I've helped launch and grow thousands of product-based businesses, even one of my own. And over the last 20 years, I've seen behind the scenes of businesses just like yours. Whether they are makers, manufacturers, artists, or food and beverage businesses, I have spent so many hours studying it all. I've discovered what makes them successful, what mistakes they could have avoided, how did they turn their ideas into a successful business. And what are the strategies that they have used to make more sales and be discovered by more customers. And this is what this show is all about. Whether you're just starting out or you're looking to become a million-dollar product boss, I'm here to give you the permission to chase your dreams no matter how big or small. All you need is the right mindset, a little courage, strategy, and support, and you too can be the next million-dollar product boss. Let's do this. Welcome to the Product Boss Podcast. I'm Jacqueline Snyder, and on this show we help established product-based business owners grow towards and beyond $1 million in revenue with stronger strategy, better systems, and a business that doesn't rely on them for every single decision. So if you are ready to simplify, scale smarter, and stop being the bottleneck in your business, you're in the right place. Today we're talking about one of the biggest reasons product-based business owners feel overwhelmed, behind, and like their business is constantly running them instead of running the business. It's this: they're producing reactively instead of planning proactively. So my friend, if your business feels reactive, it's because it probably is. And that's not judgment, that's just a diagnosis. And I think this is such an important conversation because a lot of people do not realize what feels like stress or pressure or chaos is actually a planning problem. So a lot of people think they need more time. They think they need to work harder. They think they need to be more organized, or they even think that they need better luck with inventory. And a lot of times people think they just need sales to speed up. Sometimes those things are true. But very often the bigger issue is that they are making product decisions too late, just like way too late. And they're deciding what to create too late. They're deciding what to produce too late. They're placing orders late. They're thinking about like the holiday season too late, right? And maybe they're even thinking about wholesale and when they're gonna ship to stores too late. I think a lot of times people are trying to market things after the window to prepare has already passed. And when you operate like that, your business starts to train you to live in urgency, and that's exhausting. That's overwhelming. That's why right now maybe you feel buried underneath your business. So you're probably responding to stockouts, or you're responding to what you sold, or what customers are asking for. It might be the fact that a season is coming and you're just not ready. You're just like, oh my God, I need inventory. Mother's Day is here. Summer is here. The holidays are here. And really responding to deadlines instead of actually creating them and a plan to back into it. Listen, my friends, that is reaction mode. And here's the truth. Reaction mode might get you through a season, but it will not build a scalable business. So before The Product Boss, I came from the fashion industry. And in fashion, we didn't wait around to see what felt urgent. Pretty much because we couldn't, right? You couldn't just make and produce garments, like, you know, 1,000 garments in a day to send out to the stores. So we worked really far ahead. In fact, and this is what I tell my students and the members of the Collective a lot, we worked a full year ahead of the season. So often we were looking at trends, reviewing the market, thinking about the customer, and like really designing the future collection. So let me just give you a really quick example. If I was going to be designing for spring summer, so let's pretend it's spring summer 2027 and I started coming up with the ideas. The fabric shows are in January and February of 2026. So January and February of 2026, I'm looking at fabrics. I'm starting to ideate and come up with the trends. I'm shopping the stores. I'm getting, uh, sample fabrics. Then I'm in development, like design and development for months because here's the deal. Spring, like let's say spring of 2027, we're selling it wholesale around September and October of 2026. So what does that mean? Design, development, samples are made, wholesale buyers are coming. Think about New York Fashion Week in September. Wholesale buyers are buying at that point and then we get the orders in and then we go into production and shipped to store somewhere in January, February. Okay, so that's kind of the timeline in which we work because there's no way. So if you're listening and you manufacture overseas, you know you've gotta get your orders in earlier. Those of you that are still making or maybe holding the making process within your business and you feel like, gosh, this is a lot of pressure, I feel really reactive, that's because you're really not thinking that far ahead. So what this did was this process taught me something that I still carry into everything I teach today. Healthy product businesses are not built on urgency. They can't be. They've gotta be built on sequence, on planning, on strategy, right? So planning and strategy is what allows creativity to become commerce, and that's what we're doing. We're selling products. So having these systems, having a sequence to it is a what allows you to get these products made, marketed, sold, and delivered without the your whole business feeling like a fire drill. And so that system, that process, that sequence is what turns a product-based business from reactive into led. And you, my friend, as the entrepreneur, you are the leader in your business. So this is exactly what I've been teaching inside The Collective. And this month in The Collective, every single month, so The Collective is this community, it's like education. It's basically, it's a hybrid between what I wanted when I was coming up, right? I had art school, in school and I was a designer and I had a bachelor's in fine arts, but I always wished I had business education. And so when they taught us in art and design how to be designers, they didn't teach us how to run a company. And then if you ever got a bachelor's degree or a business degree or even a master's in business, it's still not fully entrepreneurship. So what we did at The Collective was create this third place, kind of like Starbucks, but we created this third place for creatives, creative business owners, people who make and sell products to come and grow their business, to step into leadership, to learn how to run it, to learn how to grow their businesses. And we're working on all of that. So every single month in the Collective, I have a theme, some sort of system that we're plugging in. And so this month we talked about product development and production and creating production calendars. So the framework we use, which I said, is lead, run, grow. So lead is the vision. You get to set the vision. Run, are the systems in your business. And grow is the sales and momentum built on the first two. So if you skip lead and run, which many of you might be like, being like, yeah, I'm reactive, I don't have the systems built in, that's where things get really, really messy. So today I wanna walk you through this in a way that feels practical enough that you can start seeing what's missing in your business, but also show you why doing this well gives you such a big advantage. Because when you know how to work backwards, right, from the delivery date all the way back to when you start to ideate the, the product line, you stop guessing forward. And that's the entire shift. So the first thing I want you to understand is why your business feels reactive in the first place. A reactive business usually has a few symptoms. One, you're making decisions based on urgency instead of intention. Intention. You notice inventory is low, so now you reorder. You realize the selling season is coming, so you start planning. You get wholesale interest, so you start to figure out production. You see one product selling, so now you scramble to make more. Maybe you have an idea and you just jump into creating it. I see this all the time with my students, right? They're just like, I have this idea, I'm gonna make it, and figure out how it fits in the bigger plan. And then the second thing, number 2, is that your calendar is not running the business, your stress is, your reactivity is. So if you're constantly asking yourself, what do I need to do next? Or what should I be working on right now? Or what am I forgetting? Right? Who gets that one? Or maybe you're like, what's coming up? Or I have no idea, right? Your business is still living in your head. And when the business lives in your head, it's always going to feel heavier than it should. Number 3, your sales and inventory are disconnected. You either make too much and sit on inventory, which is literally cash on shelves because that's draining your cash, Or you make too little and constantly feel like you are trying to catch up. You're either hoping it sells or you're scrambling because it did sell. Anyone out there listening that's like, oh my God, I got sales now, I gotta make it. And oh my goodness, I've had students in the Collective that was like the thing we were working on because they dreaded the sales. But listen, my friends, neither is strategic. And then number 4, your team. If you have a team, maybe it's still just you because I've had students get to quarter of a million dollars, half a million dollars, really just still operating almost like a solopreneur, or you have a team that cannot move ahead because you are still the only one holding the timeline. Maybe you can't even hire because you're the one still holding the timeline. And this is a really, really, really big one. If your team, or you can't even get a team, cannot move confidently because the key decisions are not made early enough, or the production calendar does not exist clearly enough, or everyone is waiting on you to say what's next, then the business is going to stay reactive. So no matter how good your team is, you guys are stuck. So if that's you, I want to normalize something for you real quick because I've seen this. I mean, listen, I was just coaching a multimillion-dollar brand and still had these problems. So no matter where you're at, this is incredibly common. But common does not mean it's the right way to run a business. And if you're hearing this podcast episode today, maybe this is your sign that it gets to change and shift now. So it's definitely not the way you grow into a stronger 6 or 7-figure company, no matter where you're at, right? As you're getting to your first 6 figures, you're in 6, multi-6, 7 figures, and beyond that, because once you reach a certain level, the game changes. And you're no longer just making products. You're directing a business. You're the creative director. You are the boss of your business. You are not just responding to customers' demand. You are building the systems that allow demand to be served profitably and predictably. I know, I know you want the predictability. So my friends, you are not just the maker. You are the creative director. You are the planner. You are the leader. You are the boss of your business. Aka Product Boss, and that's why this matters so much. So now let's talk about what to do instead. If you want your product business to stop feeling reactive, you have to start with the endpoint and work backwards, and that's the move. Not start with what you feel like creating, not start with what you think you should reorder, and not starting with what feels exciting right now. I know, trust me, I'm like, what do I wanna do now? So you gotta start with the selling moment, with the delivery date, with when it's going to be on shelves and customers can buy it. This is the date the product needs to be available. So that might be when it lands on retail shelves, that might be the date that you launch it on your own website or when wholesale orders need to be shipped, that might be the date when it goes live. Whatever it is, you pick the moment the product needs to exist in the marketplace, when it's available, and that is your anchor date. And once you have the anchor date, you get to work backwards from there. This is where so many business owners get it wrong. They work forward from an idea And then they say, I want to make this product. They start designing, they create the samples, they figure out production, they think about photos, they think about marketing, right? All the things. Then they realize there's no timeline. That's just forward guessing, and I don't want you to get stuck there. So what I want you to do is backwards planning. Let's say that you're selling direct to consumer and that you want your holiday collection live by October 15th. That is the date, okay, October 15th. Now work backwards. If it needs to be live October 15th, then when do you need it to be done? When does the product need to physically arrive? When does the product need to be finished? When do you get the materials ordered, the final samples? When does product development need to be complete, production complete, photos complete? So you really wanna think backwards and plan from there. So now let's use wholesale as an example. If a retailer needs your products on shelves by November 1st, you do not start by asking, when do you want to make them? You start by asking, when does the retailer need them in hand? And then you work backwards from that. So the same thing we talked about direct-to-consumer, same with wholesale and the ship date. I'm gonna say this really fast. If you are selling on Faire, and I need to make this really clear, I think Faire is an amazing, amazing space for all of you. It created this opportunity to be discovered by other stores and to sell, but you're playing in the Faire playground, meaning whatever their rules are for like having inventory, being able to ship it in the next few days, all of it. It's a little bit counter to the way that I'm teaching this because it's kind of treating it like it's direct to consumer and you have product in hand, not future dates. So if you're selling on Faire, it's a tool, but what I teach my members is how we can strategically plan backwards so that you're not just sitting on inventory and being reactive, okay? So love the platform as a tool, but not as your entire wholesale method. I just gotta say that real quick. And so when you're really thinking backwards, this is how a boss, a creative director, and how real product planning works. So if you're listening right now and you're realizing, oh my God, I've never really done that, and that's okay, but that's the reason your business feels reactive, and it's because you've been starting too late in the process. To really wrap this up in a real way, you get to start to plan and work backwards. So no matter where you are, just treat this as like a, okay, now I know, and you can't unknow this. And so whether you can catch up now, or maybe it's for a future season, maybe this is for spring 2027, you get to start to work on it now, my friends. I know we wanna change everything all at once, but we can't. But at least you're aware and we get to start planning proactively versus reactively. And here's the deal. You don't always need more information. You need implementation. You need to know what to do and in what order and how to keep doing it. And that's what's really going to change the game because otherwise, how are you supposed to know? It's not just hearing you need to plan better, it's just actually being given a way to plan better. And so honestly, that's why our members in The Collective get such a leg up. They're not trying to invent every process on their own. They're being supported as leaders while also getting systems that can plug into the business. And this matters whether you're already selling wholesale or if you're direct-to-consumer or trying to do all of it. Because the businesses that get ahead are usually not the ones working the hardest in the moment. They're the ones who create more clarity before the moment arrives. And that is leadership. That goes with the idea and the framework of lead, run, grow. You get to lead by deciding earlier. You get to run the business by building a system. System and working it into a calendar and going backwards. And you get to grow because now the business has something solid to sell from. That's the sequence. And if you skip the first two, the third one is always going to feel harder than it should. So if this episode is showing you that your business feels reactive because it's actually reactive, and you know you're ready to stop living in a last-minute mode and stop carrying it all and the timelines in your head, and you're ready to start building a business that runs with stronger systems, that has better planning and more leadership. One, continue to listen to the show. Okay? Subscribe to the show, follow us on YouTube, and I wanna invite you to book a call with one of our growth advisors. You get to go to theproductboss.com/bookacall. I'll drop it in the link below, cuz whether you're at 6 figures or you're on your way to 6 figures, or maybe you're at 7 figures and multi-7, or you're just really serious about building a business that's not a hobby, but something that changes your life and creates real legacy, we would love to talk to you, see where you are, what's keeping you reactive, and how we're gonna be able to support you inside of The Product Boss and here in all of our programs. Okay? So that's theproductboss.com/bookacall. As always, there's an episode a week and like 700+ episodes before this. And I wanna give a quick shout out because we have so many— we are having a Chicago event. So if you're listening and you are coming to our Chicago event in May, Our Collective members, I am so excited to see you there in person. We're gonna go deeper into this. We're gonna answer questions. We're gonna have workshop strategy and spend real time together in the room. I cannot wait to hug all of you. It's one of the most exciting things so far this year. So at the time of this recording, I'm not sure if the tickets are still available, but if you want details, just send me a DM on Instagram with the word Chicago. And if there's tickets still available, we'll send you a link. All right, friend, if this episode gave you a real share this gift, send it to another product-based business owner who feels like she's always behind because she may not need to work harder. She may just need to start planning earlier. I'll see you next time. Thank you for being here and listening all the way through the Product Boss Podcast. If you love our show and it has helped you in any way in your business, would you mind doing two things for us? Subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode and leave us a review. Reviews help other product entrepreneurs know that this is the place to be to grow their businesses and realize that they're not alone. And we know that you all know that a 5-star and honest review helps you sell more products to more people. So you know that your reviews help us reach more listeners around the world. Remember, what we give is what we receive, and we are all about helping each other in the Product Boss community. We are all in this together. We would be so appreciative of you if you could take the time right now to subscribe, leave a review, and even share this episode on social or someone you know so we can impact more lives. And remember, subscribing means that you will get notified each time we release a new episode so you never miss a thing. You have helped us grow and climb into the top 10 of all marketing podcasts, and together we can keep climbing. Thank you, friends. And remember, there is room at the top for all of us.