9,999 orders across 5 office-furniture categories, 24 Sep 2023 – 23 Sep 2024. This dashboard traces where revenue actually comes from — and where it's leaking.
Completed orders brought in $2.86M, but another $1.44M of order value was cancelled — and cancelled orders are, on average, the same size as completed ones ($438 vs $426). This isn't a handful of bad orders; the 33% cancellation rate is nearly identical across every product category, payment method, shipping type and month in the data. At the same time, new customers generate 78% of all revenue — repeat business is thin. Category mix (chairs vs desks vs storage) explains far less of the story than these two structural issues.
Monthly revenue holds in a narrow $214K–$272K band for the eleven full months on record. There's no seasonal ramp and no downward slide — the trend line alone won't explain the business's problems.
Jan'24 is the high point at $271.9K; Dec'23 the low point among full months at $214.4K — a swing of just 27%, not a real seasonal pattern.
The Sep'23 and Sep'24 bars look like dips — they're actually partial months (7 and 23 days of data respectively). Don't read them as decline.
Because revenue is stable, the case for action sits in who cancels and who returns — not in chasing a trend that isn't moving.
If cancellations were concentrated in one product, payment method, or month, that would point straight at a fix. They aren't — the rate sits in a tight 30–35% band no matter how you slice it.
Category cancellation rates range only 32.3%–33.4% — a spread of 1.1 points. Whatever is driving cancellations, it isn't specific to chairs, desks, bookshelves or storage cabinets.
Monthly rates range 30.5%–34.7% with no trend up or down — this has been a steady operating condition for the full year, not a one-off event.
Office Chairs and Office Desks lead, which is a normal furniture mix. The more useful finding is a SKU-level data problem sitting inside the "chairs" category.
Office Chair (34.8%) and Office Desk (31.7%) together account for 66% of revenue — Bookshelf and Storage Cabinet split the remaining third fairly evenly.
CHR101 ("Office Chair") has almost the same order count as CHR102 (1,329 vs 1,328) but generated $28.0K vs $965.7K — 97% less. Its recorded unit cost averages $3.90 against a $488 catalogue price, which points to a data entry or export error, not real underperformance. Treat CHR101 revenue as unreliable until the source system is checked.
Of 6,128 unique customers, new-customer orders outnumber returning-customer orders more than 3 to 1 — and revenue splits the same way.
New customers generated $2.23M (78%) of completed revenue; returning customers only $624K (22%) — despite returning customers already being proven buyers who should be cheaper to sell to again.
Cancellation rate is identical for new (33.0%) and returning (32.8%) customers — repeat buyers cancel just as often, so loyalty isn't buying you reliability either.
Checked age and gender as possible explanations: per-customer average spend is flat across age bands ($449–$495) and near-identical by gender. Demographics aren't the lever here — retention mechanics are.
Cancellations are the single biggest lever in this data. Here's how far the data can take us toward a cause.
3,295 of 9,999 orders (33.0%) are cancelled, carrying $1.44M of order value — equal to half of completed revenue. That's large enough to matter regardless of industry norms.
Rate by category: 32.3–33.4%. By payment method: 30.7–35.2%. By shipping type: 31.9–33.8%. By month: 30.5–34.7%. Every cut lands in the same narrow band.
The dataset has no cancellation-reason field (stockout, payment failure, changed mind, delivery issue). With every business dimension ruled out, the cause is most likely operational or systemic — outside what this data can see.
Every plausible business explanation (category, payment, shipping, month, customer tenure) has been ruled out — cancellations are evenly spread, which itself is the finding: this points to something structural (checkout flow, inventory promising, fulfillment SLAs) rather than a specific weak product or channel. Recommendation: add a cancellation-reason field at the point of cancellation before the next review cycle.
33% cancel rate, uniform across category, payment, shipping and month. $1.44M in order value lost — half of completed revenue.
78% of revenue comes from first-time buyers. Returning customers cancel at the same rate as new ones, so tenure isn't building reliability either.
Chairs and desks carry 66% of revenue — normal for a furniture line. Trend is flat, not declining.
CHR101's pricing data looks broken (avg cost $3.90 vs $488 catalogue price) — worth checking at the source before it's used in any other report.