Fill rate is the share of ordered units a brand actually ships, measured against what the buyer originally ordered and confirmed.
Sep 24, 2026
Fill rate is shipped units divided by confirmed ordered units, expressed as a percentage. A buyer who ordered 500 units and received 430 was filled at 86 per cent.
The measure can be taken in units or in value, and the two can diverge sharply: shorting a handful of expensive styles damages value fill far more than unit fill. Most brands track both, because the buyer experiences the value figure.
Fill rate is the clearest measure of whether a brand is reliable. A buyer plans a floor, an open-to-buy budget, and a marketing moment around what was ordered; a partial delivery leaves gaps that cannot be filled at short notice.
Persistent under-filling is usually a production or allocation problem rather than a sales one, and it shows up as gaps in available to sell long before the buyer sees it. It is also self-reinforcing, because buyers who expect to be shorted respond by over-ordering, which distorts the next season’s forecast.
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