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Inventory at Europe's largest public companies is now sitting on shelves for 68.9 days before it sells, the longest stretch in a decade, according to The Hackett Group's 2025 European Working Capital Survey. The buildup appears to reflect, in part, a more defensive approach to inventory planning. After years of jammed ports and unreliable suppliers, companies that once held as little stock as possible started ordering early and stacking pallets as insurance.
The 2025 numbers show what that insurance costs.
Inventory is sitting on shelves for 68.9 days, the longest stretch in a decade
The Hackett Group's survey found that days inventory outstanding, the average time stock sits before it sells, jumped 4% to 68.9 days across the 1,000 largest European-headquartered nonfinancial companies. That is the highest level in ten years, and Hackett attributes the buildup directly to buffers created against supply chain and geopolitical risk.
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Stock on a shelf is cash that can't do anything else. It can't fund payroll or a new product line. And the same survey found aggregate revenue declining for a second straight year while companies borrowed more to stay liquid. Buying protection while sales shrink is an expensive combination.
The cash trapped on balance sheets: $1.7 trillion
The U.S. picture adds a second data point. Hackett's 2025 U.S. Working Capital Survey found $1.7 trillion locked in excess working capital across the 1,000 largest publicly traded nonfinancial companies, equal to 11% of their combined revenue. The overall cash conversion cycle in the U.S. actually got better in 2024, but the gain came almost entirely from companies paying suppliers more slowly. Inventory performance worsened, which Hackett ties to cautious stocking strategies amid tariff and demand uncertainty.
So even where the headline metric looks healthier, inventory performance still worsened, while longer payment terms helped improve the overall cash conversion cycle.
In retail, the tab runs to $1.73 trillion a year
What does misjudged inventory cost once it reaches the store? IHL Group puts the annual global cost of inventory distortion, the combined toll of out-of-stocks and overstocks, at $1.73 trillion, or 6.5% of global retail sales. Retailers put $172 billion toward fixing the problem in the past year, and it persisted anyway.
IHL's research found that retailers deploying AI and machine learning in certain inventory-related functions reported sales growth 2.3 times higher than competitors.
Retailers using AI inventory tools are posting 2.3x the sales growth
The anomaly in the data: neither lean nor loaded is winning. Just-in-time broke under disruption. Just-in-case is quietly eating the balance sheet. The operators pulling ahead in IHL's research have stopped treating this as a choice between the two and started getting precise about where buffer stock earns its keep.
That precision depends on knowing, at any given moment, what you actually have and where. Tools like Fishbowl's inventory management platform give operators real-time stock visibility across every location, with automated reordering that triggers purchase orders when quantities drop below set thresholds. That type of visibility may help a business make more targeted decisions about where to hold additional stock and where to maintain leaner inventory levels.
RFID adoption is projected to grow 291% over the next two years
The stockpiling reflex made sense when ports were jammed and lead times tripled. But 68.9 days of inventory and $1.7 trillion in trapped cash suggest the reflex outlived the emergency. IHL projects RFID adoption will grow 291% over the next two years, reflecting growing retailer interest in technologies designed to improve inventory visibility. Companies that built buffers as a temporary shield are already unwinding them. The ones that made buffering permanent may still be paying for warehouse space the emergency no longer requires.
