By Carson Cobb, Fractional Head of Ecommerce. Data checked November 1, 2026.
A sold out product costs more than the one sale. The shopper who clicked from an ad or an email lands on a dead end, and most don’t come back. I checked 606 Shopify stores and 121,519 products to see how often that happens, where it happens most, and how quickly growing brands add new products.
The short version
- 77% of stores had at least one product fully sold out. The typical store had 5% of its catalog sold out.
- 34% had 10% or more sold out, and 15% had a quarter or more.
- 24% of best sellers collections had something sold out. That’s the most visible stockout a store can have.
- Food brands run out most. The typical food store had 9% sold out, and 28% had a quarter or more sold out.
- The typical brand created about a quarter of its current products in the last 12 months. Apparel is closer to 41%.
Stock by category
| Category | Stores | Any product sold out | Typical share sold out | 10% or more sold out | 25% or more sold out | Variants in stock (typical) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Food and beverage | 149 | 77% | 9% | 49% | 28% | 91% |
| Home | 77 | 90% | 5% | 39% | 14% | 87% |
| Apparel | 95 | 87% | 4% | 35% | 9% | 77% |
| Beauty and skincare | 124 | 77% | 4% | 27% | 10% | 94% |
| Pet | 41 | 56% | 2% | 27% | 7% | 96% |
| Supplements | 120 | 66% | 2% | 23% | 10% | 97% |
Supplements and pet run the tightest inventory, which fits products that are reordered on a cycle. Food is a different story. Seasonal flavors, small batches and limited drops leave a lot of sold out products on the shelf, and half of food stores have at least one in ten products sold out.
Apparel has the lowest share of variants in stock (77%) because sizes sell out one at a time. A product can look available while the sizes most people need are gone.
Best sellers that are sold out
| Category | Stores with a best sellers collection | Of those, at least one sold out |
|---|---|---|
| Home | 77% | 31% |
| Food and beverage | 56% | 30% |
| Beauty and skincare | 81% | 28% |
| Pet | 71% | 21% |
| Apparel | 89% | 19% |
| Supplements | 72% | 16% |
The best sellers collection is often in the main menu and on the homepage. When something in it is sold out, it’s sold out in front of the most shoppers. Either move sold out products to the end of the collection or show a back in stock signup so the visit turns into an email address.
Catalog size and launch pace
| Category | Typical catalog size | Share of products created in the last 12 months (typical store) | Stores with no new products in 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apparel | 425 | 41% | 4% |
| Home | 131 | 26% | 5% |
| Beauty and skincare | 74 | 26% | 10% |
| Supplements | 60 | 24% | 8% |
| Pet | 55 | 16% | 10% |
| Food and beverage | 43 | 18% | 16% |
73% of stores created at least one new product between August and October. That pace matters for anything set product by product: subscription plans, bundles, upsells, reviews and search. New products are where setup gets missed. In the subscription benchmarks, half of brands with subscriptions left at least one best seller without a subscribe option.
What to do with this
- Check your sold out rate. If more than 10% of your catalog is sold out, hide or sort out products that won’t come back.
- Clean up your best sellers collection before Black Friday traffic arrives.
- Add back in stock alerts to anything that will be restocked.
- Build a launch checklist. Every new product should get its subscription plan, bundle placement, upsell rule and review request on day one.
- Run a quick check of your store with the store check.
How this was done
- Stores: 606 US Shopify stores priced in US dollars: supplements (120), beauty and skincare (124), food and beverage (149), pet (41), home (77) and apparel (95). 41 stores with more than 1,000 products were measured on their first 1,000.
- Sold out: a product counts as sold out when none of its variants are available. Gift cards were excluded.
- Best sellers: the store’s own published collection with best seller, top seller, most popular or fan favorite in its address or title, up to 30 products.
- Launch pace: based on each product’s creation date. A store migration or product import can reset creation dates, so this measures how fresh the catalog is, not a perfect launch count.
- Data: each store’s public product and collection data, checked November 1, 2026.
No store is named in this report. Want help tightening your catalog before the holidays? Book a 20 minute intro call.