A VC in Vacationland

NEW YORK – OCTOBER 14: People shop in a Apple store on October 14, 2010 in New York, New York. Riding on the success of the iPhone and iPad, shares of Apple Inc. climbed $1.60 to close at $300.14 on October 13. It is the first time in the tech company's history that the stock has topped $300. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

If you visit an Apple store once at the beginning of a week and again at the end of the week, chances are you’re seeing a completely new set of inventory. Impressively, the company turns over its inventory every five days, according to a new study.

Analyst firm Gartner, in its 2012 Supply Chain Top 25 study, says that Apple restocks its shelves 74 times a year, beating out companies like Amazon, Dell, and P&G for most inventory turned. Amazon, which is famous for its quick shipping times, only turns its inventory 10 times a year. Dell has a slightly higher refresh rate at 35 times a year, and P&G falls at five times a year.

Apple’s numbers are actually closer to fast food chain McDonalds, which turns its inventory 142 times a year.  Apple turns its inventory like a food retailers, whose products actually have an expiration and have to be swept clean by law. In Apple’s second quarter earnings call of 2012, the company announced that it had sold 35.1 million units of its iPhones, which was 88 percent higher than the year before. It also sold 11.8 million iPads, 151 percent higher than last year, and 4 million Macs, seven percent higher than last year.

Of course, the phenomenal popularity of Apple products helps keep inventory turns high. Fast turns helps with a variety of supply chain metrics–obsolescence is minimized as products are not overstocked at the retail level, inventory holding costs are lowered as fewer, expensive products reside in the channels, and pricing power maintained as gluts are minimized.

Other companies can learn a lot from Apple and its supply chain strategies. It helps that Apple has a top down view of strategy, with senior executives very supportive of efforts by supply chain professionals to run lean operations, instead of stuffing the channels using overblown sales forecasts.