New research has shown that Australian consumer electronics and telco retailers are overstocked, with an average of $277,000 in excess stock.

This is according to new research by inventory stock control software company Unleashed, who measured optimal stock positions for 381,000 different SKUs based on rate of sale and lead time from suppliers.

“Minimum stock levels were set to actual average lead time, plus seven days. Maximum stock levels were based on this minimum stock level, plus 28 days”, Unleashed explains, of its methodology.

All figures were calculated based on the last 12 months of actual lead time and rate of sale data.

Consumer electronics and telecommunications retailers tend to be more overstocked than the average retailer in Australia, according to the numbers, with $277,126 worth of excess stock.

Those who sell electrical and electronic components are even more dangerously overstocked, to the tune of $312,799 in excess.

Australian retailers across all industries are carrying, on average, $231,000 worth of excess stock.

“It’s a genuinely eye-opening number,” says Jarrod Adam, Head of Product at Unleashed.

“What we’re seeing here, really, is the cost of caution: a dollar value that shows where firms are, against where they could be – while still doing business at the same levels.”

Adam isn’t surprised, given the volatility of the global supply chain over the last few years.

“Hindsight is 20-20 of course,” he notes.

“In retrospect, it’s easy enough to say that firms could have saved ‘X’ by slimming down their buying. But these decisions were made in the middle of very volatile conditions, with lead times and prices changing by the week. So it’s hard to see how anyone could have handled it differently.”

Check out the various averages by retail industry, below.