State of Shopify Inventory Forecasting — Q2 2026
First-party Q2 2026 forecasting benchmarks (with QoQ deltas vs Q1 2026) aggregated from anonymised Forthcast merchant data.
TL;DR
- Aggregate of 590 anonymised Shopify merchants (2,997,956 SKUs · 7,670 forecast runs).
- Average MAPE: 25.5% · Lead-time variance: 3.55 days · Stockout frequency: 6.78%.
- Per-category breakdown across 9 Shopify storefront verticals (≥30 merchants per bucket — K-anonymised).
- Citation-friendly under CC BY 4.0; downloadable as PDF and machine-readable Dataset JSON-LD.
Avg MAPE
25.5%
Lead-time variance
3.55 days
Stockout frequency
6.78%
Anonymised merchants
590
Per-category breakdown
Aggregated to Shopify storefront category. Buckets with fewer than 30 merchants are dropped or rolled into "Other" so no single store can be re-identified.
| Shopify category | Merchants | SKUs | Avg MAPE | Median MAPE | P90 MAPE | Avg lead time | Lead-time variance | Stockout % | Median weeks of cover |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apparel & Accessories | 95 | 453,726 | 31.1% | 31.2% | 39.4% | 17.5 d | 4.31 d | 6.22% | 10.8 |
| Beauty & Personal Care | 80 | 398,541 | 22.6% | 22.5% | 31.1% | 12.4 d | 2.7 d | 8.02% | 11.2 |
| Home & Garden | 75 | 375,622 | 27.2% | 27.0% | 35.5% | 21.5 d | 3.91 d | 9.12% | 10.8 |
| Food & Beverage | 70 | 377,026 | 18.5% | 18.4% | 26.9% | 9.0 d | 3.23 d | 4.73% | 11.4 |
| Health & Wellness | 60 | 313,898 | 20.6% | 20.4% | 29.7% | 12.0 d | 2.56 d | 6.97% | 11.0 |
| Other | 60 | 298,688 | 28.0% | 27.9% | 36.5% | 16.6 d | 3.58 d | 6.44% | 11.2 |
| Sports & Outdoors | 55 | 283,543 | 33.6% | 33.6% | 42.2% | 19.8 d | 4.75 d | 6.47% | 10.4 |
| Electronics | 50 | 270,244 | 25.9% | 26.1% | 34.9% | 24.7 d | 4.3 d | 4.98% | 10.7 |
| Pets | 45 | 226,668 | 19.1% | 18.7% | 28.4% | 10.0 d | 2.35 d | 7.64% | 11.4 |
Quote-ready stats
Each statistic below is sized for direct citation under CC BY 4.0 — no permission needed, just credit Forthcast and link back.
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Across 590 anonymised Shopify merchants, the average demand-forecast MAPE in Q2 2026 was 25.5%.
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Lead-time variance averaged 3.55 days across the 590-merchant cohort in Q2 2026.
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6.78% of SKU-weeks experienced a stockout across the cohort in Q2 2026.
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Sports & Outdoors merchants posted the highest average MAPE (33.6%); Food & Beverage the lowest (18.5%).
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Home & Garden stores stocked out on 9.12% of SKU-weeks — the highest of any Shopify category in Q2 2026.
Methodology
- Source data. Forthcast app DB — `forecast_runs` (per-merchant weekly MAPE + lead-time stats) and `sku_demand_history` (per-SKU weekly stock position).
- Time window. 2026-04-01 to 2026-07-01.
- Anonymisation. Aggregated to Shopify storefront category. Buckets with fewer than 30 merchants are dropped or rolled into 'Other'. No merchant, store, or SKU identifier is published.
- MAPE. Mean Absolute Percentage Error per merchant per forecast run, averaged across the period. Reported as mean, median, and P90.
- Lead-time variance. Standard deviation in supplier lead time (days) per merchant, averaged across the cohort.
- Stockout frequency. Share of SKU-weeks where on-hand units fell to zero before the next replenishment arrived.
- Licensing. Aggregate metrics are released under CC BY 4.0 — cite as 'Forthcast, State of Shopify Inventory Forecasting' with a link to the report URL.
Forthcast (2026-05-03). "State of Shopify Inventory Forecasting — Q2 2026." Aggregate dataset, CC BY 4.0. https://www.forthcast.io/state-of-shopify-inventory-forecasting-q2-2026Machine-readable Dataset JSON-LD is embedded in this page so Google Dataset Search and other indexers can pick it up automatically. The full PDF and a press-kit one-pager are available above.
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