Shoe and Jersey Sellers: How to Manage Your Variants So You Never Get Your Stock Wrong Again

A customer asks for the white Nike Air Force 1 in size 43. You search for 2 minutes. You find a 43 — but in black. The white 43, you sold it 3 days ago without recording it.

The customer leaves. Or they take the black one reluctantly. Or they negotiate a lower price because “it’s not really what I wanted”. Either way, it’s not the sale you were hoping to make.

Every shoe and jersey seller knows this scenario. And it repeats itself several times a week — because managing a stock of shoes or jerseys is not the same as managing a stock of soap or sardines.

Here, every item exists in 10, 15, sometimes 20 different versions. And all of those versions need to be tracked separately.

The problem specific to fashion sellers: variants

When you sell a classic Nike shoe, you’re not selling one item. You’re potentially selling:

• 8 sizes: 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45 → 8 size variants
• 3 colourways: white, black, grey → 3 colour variants

That’s 24 variants for a single shoe model. If you sell 5 different models, that’s 120 variants to track. Add football jerseys (club + size + home/away version) and you quickly understand why a simple “in/out” notebook no longer cuts it.

The real question isn’t whether you have Nike in stock. It’s whether you have the white Nike Air Force 1 in size 43 in stock. Those are two very different questions.

What happens when you don’t track variants properly

You buy stock you already have

You go to your supplier. You order 3 pairs of Nike in size 42 because you think you’re running low. When you get back, you discover you still had 4 at the bottom of a box. You now have 7. They’ll take 3 weeks to sell.

Meanwhile, size 40 has been out of stock for 5 days and 3 customers have already asked for it.

You tie up money in sizes that don’t sell

Without data on what’s actually selling, you end up with too many large sizes (44, 45) sitting there and not enough of the common sizes (40, 41, 42, 43). These unsold items lock up your capital. That money could have been used to restock what actually sells.

You can’t answer a customer precisely

“Do you have the Chelsea jersey in size L?” — If you have to rummage through boxes for 3 minutes to answer, the customer loses confidence. They think you’re not serious. A seller who knows their stock earns trust. A seller who fumbles around, less so.

How to organise your shoe and jersey stock — a practical method

Here’s how to structure your stock tracking, whether you use a notebook or an Excel spreadsheet. The goal is simple: at any point, know exactly what you have for each variant.

Method 1: The per-model notebook table

For each model (Nike Air Force 1, PSG jersey, Jordan 1, etc.), create a dedicated page with a simple table:

Do the same for each colourway (black, grey, other). Fill in this table with every sale — not at the end of the day, but at the moment of sale. A 2-hour delay becomes a full-day gap.

When you go to your supplier, take this notebook with you. The “Need to order?” column tells you exactly what to buy.

Method 2: The Excel table on your phone

If you have Google Sheets or Excel on your phone, you can do the same thing digitally. The advantage: you can filter by column, search for a model quickly, and share the file with your sales staff.

Recommended structure:

With every sale, reduce the quantity by 1. Filter on “Quantity = 0” before each supplier visit.

The real advantage of Excel: you can also calculate your margin per model (Selling price − Cost price) and quickly see which shoes make you the most. If the Nike Air Force 1 gives you 10,000 FCFA margin per pair and the Jordan 1 only 5,000 — you know where to focus your restocking budget.

3 golden rules to make it actually work

1. Record at the moment of sale, not after. Memory is a sieve when you’re serving 20 customers in a day. Write down the size, colour and quantity at the exact moment you collect payment.
2. Do a physical inventory every Monday morning. Count actual pairs by model and size. Correct your table if the numbers don’t match. A weekly inventory takes 30 minutes but saves you weeks of accumulating discrepancies.
3. Set a minimum threshold per variant. For example: when you have fewer than 2 pairs of a given size left, that’s the signal to reorder. Never reach zero before placing an order.

What you learn by tracking your variants seriously

After 4 to 6 weeks of rigorous tracking, you start to see very useful patterns:

• The star sizes: sizes 40, 41, 42, 43 sell 3 times faster than 38 and 45. You buy fewer small and large sizes, more mid-range ones.
• The colours that linger: grey sells twice as slowly as white and black. You buy less of it, or only on request.
• The most profitable models: some cheaper models sell faster and bring you more in total. You adjust your range accordingly.
• Your sales peaks: back-to-school, holidays, big football matches — you now know when to build up your stock in advance.

A seller who knows their numbers buys better, sells better and earns better. Not because of luck — because they decide based on facts, not impressions.

The limits of the notebook and Excel

These methods work. They are infinitely better than managing everything from memory or with an unstructured notebook.

But they have limits you will quickly run into:

• The notebook gets lost, gets wet, deteriorates. A model’s page ends up illegible.
• Excel on your phone is slow to update in the middle of a sale. When you have 5 customers, you don’t open your spreadsheet between each transaction.
• Neither the notebook nor Excel sends you a notification when size 42 hits zero.
• Sharing the file with your staff creates confusion risks if two people edit at the same time.

These are not reasons to abandon these methods — they remain useful, especially to get started. But as your business grows, you’ll feel the point where you need a tool built specifically for this.