lead time
Lead Time is the stretch between placing an order and actually receiving the goods, and it can calmly make or break a small business.
In plain English
Here is the backwards part. The businesses that run out of stock most often are not the small ones with little money. They are often the ones growing fast, taking bigger orders, feeling confident, and forgetting to ask one question early enough: how long will it take for this next batch to actually arrive.
Lead time is that waiting stretch. It is the gap between the moment you place an order with your supplier and the moment the goods land in your hands, ready to sell. It sounds like a logistics detail, but it behaves more like a heartbeat. Get the timing wrong and everything downstream, sales, cash, customer trust, starts to wobble.
Take a woman in Lagos who sells Ankara fabric online. She notices stock running low and orders more from her supplier in Aba. If that supplier needs three weeks to weave, dye and deliver, her lead time is three weeks. If she waits until she is completely out of stock before ordering, she spends three weeks turning away customers who wanted to buy today, not next month.
In the United Kingdom, a small furniture maker in Leeds might import oak from a European timber yard with a six week lead time. If he only reorders when the wood shelf is bare, his workshop sits idle for six weeks while wages still go out. Knowing the lead time means he reorders while he still has enough wood to keep working, not after.
This is why lead time sits so close to cash flow and to supply chain thinking generally. A business does more than need to know what to order. It needs to know when to order, based on how long the wait will be, so the shelf never truly empties and the customer never truly waits.
A soap maker in Enugu uses palm oil that takes ten days to arrive from her supplier once ordered. She sells through her stock in about twenty five days. So she reorders on day fifteen, not day twenty five, leaving enough buffer for the ten day lead time and a few days to spare in case the delivery van gets held up at a checkpoint.
Questions people ask
How do I calculate my own lead time?
Ask your supplier directly, then track it yourself for a few orders. Note the date you place the order and the date it actually arrives, not the date they promised. Real numbers beat promised numbers every time, especially with suppliers who mean well but run late.
What happens if I ignore lead time and just order when stock runs out?
You get stockouts, which means empty shelves, disappointed customers, and often those same customers buying from a competitor instead and simply staying there out of habit.
Can lead time change over time?
Yes, often for reasons outside your control. Fuel prices, border delays, rainy seasons, and even your supplier growing busier with other customers can all stretch a lead time that used to be reliable, so it is worth rechecking it every few months rather than assuming it stays fixed.
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