Two numbers, one gap. Sell-in is what you committed to when you signed the order. Sell-out is what the customer agreed with. The distance between them is your money, sitting on a shelf, in specific sizes and colors.
Sell-in: what comes in from the supplier
Sell-in is measured at purchase: units and cost value of what you bought, whether that was a season order placed nine months ahead or an in-season reorder. For a brand selling wholesale it is revenue. For the shop buying, it is capital committed before a single customer has seen the garment.
Sell-out: what leaves the till
Sell-out is units and retail value sold to end customers, across every channel: the shop, your own online store, and each marketplace. Sell-through is the ratio of the two, usually written as a percentage of the units bought.
| Bought (sell-in) | Sold (sell-out) | Sell-through | Left | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Style A | 100 | 85 | 85% | 15 |
| Style B | 100 | 60 | 60% | 40 |
| Style C | 100 | 25 | 25% | 75 |
Style A is a reorder candidate. Style C is the one that will be marked down, and the earlier you see it the smaller the markdown needs to be.
Why the gap has to be read per variant
A style at 60% sell-through can be two very different situations. Sold out in M and L with S and XL untouched is a sizing problem, and the fix is next season's curve. Selling evenly across sizes but only in black is a color problem, and the fix is the color range. Style-level reporting averages both away and tells you neither.
Timing matters as much as the split. The same 60% is healthy in week four and a warning in week twelve, because what is left has fewer full-price weeks to sell in.
How Agilo handles it
Agilo records sell-in at variant level when a load is closed, with the quantities and costs its AI pulled out of the supplier's documents. The Sell-In report then breaks purchases down by brand, season, category and variant, so the gap you are reading is the gap on a specific size and color rather than an average across the style. Stock stays in step with connected channels, so sell-out is counted wherever the sale happened.