Dash Captain is in early access — we're onboarding sellers in waves.
Join early accessSales velocity
How fast a product sells — units per day, week or month.
Sales velocity is the rate a product sells at, usually units per day. It drives inventory planning (runway, reorder timing) and signals momentum — a rising velocity may mean it's time to reorder sooner or scale ads; a falling one may mean a problem to investigate.
In practice
Sales velocity is the input almost every inventory decision runs on — runway, reorder points and safety stock are all just this number wearing different hats. It's also the earliest honest signal of momentum: a product losing velocity is losing interest weeks before that shows up in a monthly revenue total, because the total is still being propped up by price or by other lines.
On marketplaces it does double duty, because velocity feeds rank. Amazon's algorithm rewards products that sell consistently, so a stockout doesn't just cost the orders you miss — it costs the position that was generating them, and rebuilding that costs more than the lost margin did. Which is why velocity is worth watching per product rather than in aggregate, where the ones fading are hidden by the ones growing.
Formula
Sales velocity = Units sold ÷ Days in period
Example: 600 units over 30 days = 20 units/day.
What a good result depends on
Trend matters most — compare against stock on hand and lead time.
Common mistakes
- Using a promo-spike period as the baseline.
- Ignoring velocity changes until you've already stocked out.
Questions people ask
- How do I calculate sales velocity?
- Units sold divided by the number of days in the period. Ninety units over 30 days is a velocity of three a day — the figure that then drives runway and reorder points.
- What window should I use?
- Long enough to smooth daily noise, short enough to reflect current demand; 14 to 30 days works for most catalogues. Be deliberate around promotions and seasonal peaks, which make the recent past a poor guide.
- Why does velocity matter beyond stock planning?
- Because marketplace ranking is partly built on it. Consistent sales support visibility, and a stockout breaks that momentum — the recovery usually costs more than the missed orders themselves.