Following a year when adapting to new tariffs emerged as the defining challenge for supply chains, 2026 has brought small and medium-sized businesses a much broader set of pressures to manage.
A survey conducted by Netstock, a provider of supply chain planning and inventory management software, asked more than 150 SMB customers which factors had the greatest impact on their inventory planning this year. The responses were closely grouped, highlighting just how difficult the current environment has become.
Supplier lead-time fluctuations ranked first, cited by 29% of respondents. Raw material and input costs followed at 23%, tying with freight and shipping costs at 23%. Changes in demand were identified by 21%.
Looking at the challenges more broadly, the proportion of businesses affected by each issue was significantly higher. Some 77% of respondents said supplier lead times were among their leading challenges, while 72% pointed to freight and shipping costs. Raw material and input costs were cited by 66%, and demand shifts by 57%.
“In other words, most SMBs are juggling multiple pressures at once,” Netstock wrote in its survey report.
That overlap is one of the defining characteristics of the 2026 supply chain environment, according to the report. Rather than dealing with the more familiar form of volatility in which variables tend to shift one after another, businesses are now facing several moving parts simultaneously.
Lead times, however, have not deteriorated uniformly across the market. Netstock found a significant gap between businesses moving inventory quickly and those operating at the slower end of the spectrum. The fastest-moving group averaged lead times of 21 days, while the slowest averaged 79 days.
Against this backdrop, Netstock argues that resilience should not simply be measured by whether a company hits every inventory target on its scorecard.
“It’s about recognizing which problem matters most right now and acting on it without losing control of everything else,” the company wrote.
Netstock’s scorecard evaluates four specific measures:
-
An active strategy for reducing excess inventory, applicable to 93% of survey respondents.
-
Service levels above 90%, referring to how effectively a company meets customer demand without running out of inventory, applicable to 53% of respondents.
-
The use of at least one alternative procurement strategy, reported by 34% of respondents.
-
Dead stock representing less than 5% of excess inventory, achieved by 32% of respondents.
While 73% of those surveyed met two or three of these measures, just 7% managed to meet all four.
At the same time, the survey indicates that although a majority of SMBs have made progress in optimizing inventory management, roughly one-third remain either understocked or in difficulty in this area.
“Faster inventory movement is becoming more common, but it does not translate into the right stock being available when customers need it,” the report noted.
The problem is also becoming increasingly visible in the amount of excess inventory that turns into dead stock. After rising from 12% in 2024 to 17% in 2025, the share climbed again in 2026, reaching 24%.
According to Netstock, the increasingly difficult-to-predict relationship between supply and demand is leaving more businesses with inventory that no longer corresponds to what customers actually need.
