How much peptide stock to hold and when to reorder it.

Start with run rate, not with a target

Inventory planning starts with run rate: how many vials of each compound you actually sell in an ordinary week.

Use real orders, not hopes. Go back through your WhatsApp threads or order log for the last four to eight weeks, count vials sold per compound, and divide by the number of weeks. That number is your average weekly run rate. Note the highest week as well, because the gap between the average and the peak is what safety stock exists to cover.

Do this per compound and per vial size. A reseller who moves a lot of one compound and occasional vials of five others has six different inventory problems, not one. If you are just starting and have no history, you do not have a run rate yet, and the honest plan is to order against confirmed sales until you do.

Watch for patterns in the calendar as well. Many Philippine buyers are paid on the fifteenth and the thirtieth, so orders often bunch around paydays, and the weeks before Christmas and after the thirteenth-month pay behave differently from a quiet week in the rainy season. An average across eight weeks hides that. If your peaks follow the payroll calendar, plan your reorder so the stock is on the shelf before payday rather than arriving after it.

Lead time: a local supplier versus an import

Lead time is the gap between deciding to reorder and having the stock on your shelf, and it is the number that most changes how much you need to hold.

From a supplier holding stock in Metro Manila, lead time is short. Our own deliveries reach Metro Manila addresses the same day on weekday orders before 12 noon, Luzon in 1 to 2 business days, the Visayas in 2 to 3 business days and Mindanao in 3 to 5 business days. Add a day for your own reorder habits and that is your planning lead time.

An import is a different calculation. A shipment from an overseas manufacturer takes weeks rather than days, the arrival date moves, and customs or courier delays are outside your control. To avoid running out on an import cycle you have to hold weeks of stock plus a buffer for the cycle that arrives late, and you pay for all of it before any of it can be sold.

Neither is wrong. Importing direct can win on unit price at real volume. But the lead time sets the shape of the business, and it is worth deciding on purpose rather than by default.

Reorder point and safety stock

The reorder point is the stock level at which you place the next order, and it equals run rate over the lead time plus safety stock.

Written as a formula: reorder point equals weekly run rate multiplied by lead time in weeks, plus safety stock. Safety stock is the extra you hold for a week that runs above average, or a restock that arrives a day late. A simple way to set it is the difference between your busiest recent week and your average week, for each compound.

When your count for a compound falls to its reorder point, you reorder. Not when it hits zero and not when a customer asks for the last vial. The whole point of the number is that you order before the problem is visible.

• Run rate

  Average vials sold of one compound in an ordinary week, from real orders.

• Lead time

  Time from placing a reorder to stock on your shelf, in weeks or fractions of a week.

• Safety stock

  Extra vials for a week above average or a late restock. Busiest recent week minus average week is a fair starting point.

• Reorder point

  Run rate multiplied by lead time, plus safety stock. Reorder when your count reaches it.

• Order quantity

  Enough to bring you back to a comfortable level, often a set number of weeks of run rate. A pack size is a natural unit if it roughly matches.

A worked example, in vials

Here is a worked example with deliberately hypothetical round numbers, to show the arithmetic rather than any real seller's figures.

Imagine a reseller in Quezon City who sells, on average, six vials of one compound a week, with a busiest recent week of nine. Safety stock is the gap between those, three vials.

With a local supplier and a lead time of about one day, call it a fifth of a week, run rate over lead time is just over one vial. Reorder point is roughly one vial plus three of safety stock, so four vials. If this reseller reorders two weeks of run rate each time, they order twelve vials when the shelf drops to four. By the time the reorder lands the shelf is at about three, and it goes back up to about fifteen. Average stock on the shelf is around nine vials.

Now imagine the same reseller importing, with a hypothetical lead time of four weeks and a less predictable arrival, so a larger safety stock of, say, a further two weeks of run rate. Run rate over lead time is twenty-four vials, safety stock is fifteen once the late-arrival buffer is added, and the reorder point is thirty-nine. Ordering in shipments of eight weeks of run rate means forty-eight vials at a time. The shelf swings between about fifteen when a shipment lands on time and over sixty just after, and average stock runs at around thirty-nine vials.

Same customers, same sales. The import route needs roughly four times as many vials on the shelf to give the same service, and every one of those vials is paid for in advance. That is the whole working-capital argument in one example.

The cash tied up in stock

Every vial on your shelf is cash you cannot use for anything else until it sells, so the cheapest stock is often the stock you do not hold.

Work it out as average vials on hand per compound multiplied by what you paid per vial, summed across the range. That figure is money sitting still. It cannot pay for ads, a rider, a second compound that is starting to move, or your rent in a slow month. For pack prices to plug into that formula, use the published pack pricing rather than a number from memory.

Reducing lead time is the most effective way to shrink it, because it shrinks both the reorder point and the safety stock you need. Holding fewer slow movers is the second. Negotiating a lower unit price is usually third, which is the opposite of what most new resellers focus on.

Slow movers, expiry and storage

A slow mover is a compound that sells less than one or two vials a month, and a reseller should usually order it against confirmed sales instead of holding it.

Slow movers cost more than they look. They tie up cash for months, they take fridge or freezer space from stock that turns, and the longer a vial sits, the more its storage history matters. Keep the catalogue you hold small and order the long tail when a customer has paid.

Storage is part of inventory planning, not a separate topic. Sealed lyophilised powder is stable in a freezer and tolerates a fridge for stock you expect to move sooner, and a dedicated fridge opened rarely is better than a shared kitchen one. Brownouts are a real risk in parts of the Philippines, so know what you will do when the power goes: the door stays shut. The detail is in storing peptide stock in the Philippines.

Rotate by batch. Sell the oldest batch first, and keep the batch number with every vial so a question from a customer can be traced. If you want the date on a batch for your own records, ask on WhatsApp when you order.

A weekly stock count routine

A weekly stock count is a fifteen-minute routine: count every compound by batch on the same day each week and compare it to the reorder point.

Pick a quiet day, early in the week so any reorder lands before the weekend. Keep it in a spreadsheet or a notes app with one row per compound and vial size.

• Count

  Physically count sealed vials of each compound and size, by batch number. Do not count from memory or from the order log.

• Reconcile

  Compare the count with what the log says should be there. A gap means a missed order, a breakage or a vial given away, and you want to know which.

• Update run rate

  Add this week's sales and roll the average forward. If a compound is trending up or down, adjust its reorder point.

• Reorder

  Anything at or below its reorder point gets reordered in one message, the same day.

• Check storage

  Look at the fridge or freezer, oldest batches at the front, nothing reconstituted mixed in with sealed stock.

When a compound runs out

When a compound runs out, tell waiting customers the truth straight away, with a realistic restock date, and do not substitute another compound for it.

An honest date beats an optimistic one, because the customer will hold you to whatever you say. Offer to take their name and message them when it is back. Do not suggest a different compound as a replacement for something a customer was planning to use: that is advice about use, which a reseller should not give.

Then fix the cause. A stock-out usually means the reorder point was too low, the run rate moved and the count did not catch it, or the reorder went in late. Raise the safety stock on that compound for a few weeks and look again.

Keeping stock lean with a local supplier

The leanest way to run inventory is to hold your reliable fast movers and buy everything else from a supplier with local stock as you need it.

Short lead time is what makes that work. When a reorder lands the same day in Metro Manila, you can hold a few days of your fast movers instead of a few weeks, order the long tail against confirmed sales, and free the rest of your cash for growing the business. Many established resellers end up in exactly that mixed position.

If running out of a compound would cost you more than holding it, a reseller account adds allocation, meaning stock held against your run rate. How that works, and when it is not worth it, is in how a reseller account works. Terms are set per account in the WhatsApp thread.