Art Lounge — Sales by channel

All revenue is invoiced sales — open/unshipped orders are excluded. Older months are fully invoiced; May and June still have orders in the pipeline (shown as a separate line below).

Monthly revenue by channel

*June shows two things: ₹33.8L invoiced in the first 18 days, and a ~₹70L full-month projection (the chart's dashed line) once open orders ship and the rest of the month lands. Jan–May are invoiced actuals (revenue = dispatched/delivered line items, tax-incl, post-discount, ex-shipping); they're fully invoiced (<2% open). May still has ₹7.6L of orders to invoice as well.

Why ~₹70L is a reasonable June estimate, not a guess: it's mostly orders already in hand — ₹44.3L placed in the first 18 days (₹33.8L invoiced + ₹10.5L shipping). Across Jan–May the first 18 days captured ~62% of the full month on average, so ₹44.3L ÷ 0.62 ≈ ₹71L (≈₹70L after the ~2% of orders that never invoice). June's first-half pace also sits between May's (which finished ₹65L) and April's (₹83L), pointing to the same range. The swing factor is B2B order timing — a realistic range is ₹62–75L.

Why May fell: 5 accounts, not the market

The ₹28.0L B2B drop (Apr ₹55.5L → May ₹27.4L invoiced, −51%) comes from a handful of large accounts that didn't reorder — not broad weakness. The customer base actually grew, and part of May's gap is orders still in the pipeline.

Biggest pullbacks (April → May)

Offsetting gains & new accounts

Invoiced basis matters here: an earlier all-orders view showed 8B-ArtHub as a new ₹1.47L gain and A N Commtrade up ₹5.42L — but 8B-ArtHub is an open, unshipped order (₹0 invoiced) and ₹4.3L of A N Commtrade's May is still in the pipeline. Counting only invoiced sales removes that noise.

Paid media — efficiency held, and the May spend spike was deliberate

Ads drive Online, not wholesale B2B — so judge spend against Online revenue, not the total. On that basis efficiency held all year: a steady 20–27% of Online. May's ~₹1L of extra spend was a deliberate budget turn-up — and the two platforms split: Meta paid off, Google didn't.

The May spike: Google over-scaled, Meta didn't

The ₹1.05L increase was budget turned up, not rising ad prices. (ROAS = return on ad spend: ₹ of sales per ₹ spent.)

Google: spend +37% and clicks +37% at an identical ₹4.37 CPC = budget turned up, not auction inflation. But conversions rose only +12%, so conversion rate fell 4.1%→3.4%, cost-per-order rose ₹106→₹130, and ROAS slid 6.5×→5.1×. The extra third of clicks was colder traffic.

Meta: spend +21% with CPC up only modestly (₹3.15→3.43), and purchase ROAS actually improved 2.6→3.4 — its best since February. Meta's scale-up paid for itself; Google's didn't.

¹ June 1–18. ² Google on-platform reported conversion value ÷ cost (overstates true store ROAS; useful for trend). ³ Meta reported purchase ROAS.

Stock availability — the biggest hidden lever

One number tells the whole story. Our single biggest product sold 16 units a month while out of stock, then 5,996 in the first month we restocked it — same product, same price, same demand. The only thing that changed was whether it was on the shelf. And we're out of our best products about half the time, leaving a standing ceiling on revenue every single month.

One product, two scenarios — Koh-i-noor eraser (SKU 6312, our #1 product)

Sales don't lead availability — availability leads sales. The gap between the two columns is demand we already had and simply couldn't fulfil.

The cliff is the whole point: three flat bars near zero (out of stock), then a near-vertical jump the moment it's restocked in April. Same product throughout — the flat bars on the left are revenue we left on the table.

It's not one lucky SKU — the pattern repeats every time

Royal Talens sold its entire half-year of volume in the single month it had stock. Across our top brands, monthly sales track monthly availability almost one-for-one (correlation 0.7–1.0).

…and the stockouts land squarely on the winners

Our top-tier (A-class) SKUs are in stock only about half the days. The highest-demand lines are far worse: Winsor & Newton, Royal Talens and Claessens canvas heroes sit in stock under 10% of the time — W&N's top brush line, on its own worth ₹6.2L of sales, was available just 21 of 168 days.

Share of each brand's selling SKUs out of stock right now. W&N's 18% overall is misleading — its bestsellers specifically are 80–95% out. The products that actually sell are out far more often than the brand average suggests.

The twist: we're not short on stock — we're short on the right stock

While the winners sit empty, ₹3.96 Cr is frozen in dead stock — 4,250 SKUs, a third of all in-stock value, unsold for 90+ days (Favini ₹64L, the slow W&N tail ₹55L, Lana, Schut, Pebeo). So this isn't a cash or warehouse problem; it's a mix problem: we're out of the winners and overstocked on the losers — often inside the same brand. Winsor & Newton is at once our most stocked-out bestseller brand and our #2 dead-stock brand. The money to keep fast-movers in stock is already paid for — it's just sitting in the wrong products.

What the half-year says

Two different things move this business — don't confuse them. Wholesale reorder timing sets the month-to-month swings (it's why May dipped, and it self-corrects). Stock availability sets the ceiling on what any month can reach (chronic, and fixable).

What happened

• B2B is the topline. It's 60–68% of revenue and swings ±₹11L on a few large accounts' reorder timing. Mar–Apr (~₹81L) was a B2B high; May's ₹57L was a handful of accounts pausing, not lost demand.
• Online is the one steady grower. A clean climb ₹12.2L → ₹17.5L (Jan–May), up almost every month — and the only channel paid media drives.
• Retail is lumpy; Marketplaces are noise. Plan around B2B and Online; the other two don't move the number.

What to do

• Rebalance inventory — liquidate dead lines and fund depth on proven fast-movers. This is the single highest-return operational move (one restock turned ₹0.2L into ₹7.8L).
• Hold Meta, trim Google back toward its efficient ₹1.8L sweet spot; judge paid media on Online revenue, not the total.
• Don't anchor targets to the April peak. It was an exceptional B2B month; treat ~₹65–80L (firming up as orders invoice) as the working range.