A family opening the second shop on an island of about nine hundred people, with a fitted room, no stock and a fixed amount of money.
The temptation with a new shop is to fill it, and a full shop with the wrong lines is worse than a thin one with the right ones. We worked from the island rather than from our list: what the other shop already stocked, what the ferry brought in, what households were buying in Male on their trips and carrying back.
The first load was three hundred lines weighted towards provisions, cleaning and plastics, and deliberately short on anything with a date on it. The second load, a fortnight later, was decided by what had actually sold in the first two weeks rather than by the plan. Seven lines from the first order were dropped and eleven were added.
They have ordered every month since and they carry about four hundred and forty lines. The fortnight gap between those two first loads is the part we would repeat.
