Inventory Indigestion is what happens when you greenlight a 20,000-unit production run based on gut instinct instead of market data. Your contract manufacturer offered a good MOQ. Your team assumed Vitamin C still sells. Nobody checked whether the market had already moved to Ceramides and airless pumps. Now you're sitting on $85K in dead stock — and a competitor just launched the exact serum your customers were begging for.

23% of negative serum reviews cite oxidation from jar packaging — a packaging decision, not a formulation flaw. That single spec miss tanks your Amazon rank and forces $41,667/mo in recovery PPC.

Total damage from one wrong SKU bet: $1,034,500/yr. This isn't bad luck. It's a data problem — fixable before the PO is signed.