Inventory Turnover by Ecommerce Product Category

Chewy: 10.4x (FY2025) · ~35 days

Chewy turned its inventory 10.4 times in its most recent fiscal year, calculated from $8,847.6 million in cost of goods sold against average inventory of $850.75 million. That works out to roughly 35 days between when a unit of stock arrives and when it's sold, the fastest cycle in this dataset. This is the same structural advantage that shows up in our companion research on marketing spend by category, where Chewy posted the lowest marketing-spend ratio measured: pet food and supplies are consumable, not one-time purchases, so a large share of what moves off the shelf is a repeat order from an existing customer rather than new stock waiting on a first-time buyer.

GoPro: 5.8x (FY2023) · ~63 days

GoPro turned its inventory 5.8 times in its most recently detailed fiscal year, calculated from $680.0 million in cost of revenue against average inventory of $116.7 million. Inventory itself fell 16% year over year, from $127.1 million to $106.3 million, alongside declining revenue, so part of this turnover figure reflects a company deliberately shrinking its stock position to match softening demand rather than pure sell-through efficiency. Worth reading alongside our companion research on marketing spend, where GoPro's marketing intensity ran high and rising over the same stretch: a company can be moving inventory reasonably fast while still fighting to convert that movement into growth.

Mattel: 5.2x (FY2025) · ~71 days

Mattel turned its inventory 5.2 times in its most recent fiscal year, calculated from $2,742.0 million in cost of sales against average inventory of $532.4 million, up from $501.7 million the year before. That average figure hides more than it shows for a toy company specifically: inventory builds through the second and third quarters ahead of the holiday season, then sells down sharply in the fourth, so the annual turnover ratio blends a slow accumulation phase with a fast liquidation phase rather than reflecting steady, even sell-through across the year the way a category like pet products does.

Nike: 3.5x (FY2025) · ~103 days

Nike turned its inventory 3.5 times in its most recent fiscal year, calculated from $26,519 million in cost of sales against average inventory of $7,504 million, essentially flat year over year ($7,519 million to $7,489 million). A three-and-a-half-month cycle between production and sale is typical for a company managing seasonal apparel lines and wholesale-plus-DTC distribution simultaneously, stock has to sit in the system long enough to reach both retail partners and Nike's own channels before it clears. That's a slower cycle than the toy or electronics categories above despite Nike's scale, which points to apparel's longer supply chain lead times rather than weak demand.

Signet Jewelers: 2.1x (FY2026, calculated) · ~172 days

Signet Jewelers turned its inventory roughly 2.1 times in its most recent fiscal year, calculated from an estimated $4,122 million in cost of sales (derived from $6,813.6 million in sales and a disclosed 39.5% gross margin) against average inventory of $1,938.7 million, which sat almost exactly flat year over year. Nearly six months of inventory on hand is expensive to finance, but it's structural to the category: a jewelry retailer has to hold a wide enough spread of price points and styles in each store for a customer to find the specific piece they're there for, and that piece often represents a considered, infrequent purchase rather than an impulse buy.

This cost-of-sales figure is calculated from two disclosed numbers (total sales and gross margin percentage), not a line item Signet reports directly as a dollar figure.

e.l.f. Beauty: 2.0x (FY2025) · ~183 days

e.l.f. Beauty turned its inventory exactly 2.0 times in its most recent fiscal year, calculated from $377.8 million in cost of sales against average inventory of $189.3 million, which actually declined slightly year over year even as the company's revenue grew. Roughly six months of stock on hand is the slowest cycle among conventional retailers in this dataset, and it lines up with what our companion research found on both margin and marketing spend: e.l.f. posts the highest gross margin (71.2%) and the highest marketing-spend ratio (21.4% of net sales) measured across all three pages. A slow-turning product needs that margin cushion to cover the carrying cost of sitting in inventory for half a year, and needs continuous paid acquisition spend precisely because a wide catalog of SKUs sitting on shelves doesn't sell itself the way a narrow, high-repeat catalog does.

Wayfair: 109.6x (FY2024) · ~3 days

Wayfair's reported inventory turnover works out to roughly 110 times a year, calculated from $8,277 million in cost of goods sold against average inventory of just $75.5 million. That number is real, but it doesn't mean what it would mean for any other company on this page: Wayfair runs an asset-light model where most orders drop-ship directly from the manufacturer or supplier to the customer, so the company itself barely touches physical inventory at all. The figure measures how little furniture Wayfair warehouses on its own books, not how efficiently a piece of furniture actually moves from a factory floor to a customer's home, which is a fundamentally different question a small furniture retailer holding its own stock would need to answer differently.

Not a meaningful comparison point for a merchant who holds their own inventory. Include only if you understand why the number is this extreme.