Fashion comes and go. Trends come and go. The fashion industry is a hugely competitive industry and in order to stay afloat in the trade there are many things behind the scenes of just “selling clothes” that a brand/business must do in order to survive. One of the many imperative issues with fashion retailers is stock. This means, predicting what trends will be popular and purchasing for the next season. How much to order to meet customer demands? What if the sales forecast for demand is wrong?
It may never cross a consumer’s mind the processes retailers embark in the process of sourcing, buying and promoting merchandize in store. Would it be safe to say that consumers see only how trendy and appealing the clothing pieces look on the mannequins and racks? Beyond this, there is more to just the mere practice of “selling clothes”. There is a profusion of research, planning, budgeting and forecasting. Any errors in any given element of these processes may and will likely result in inaccurate results which may affect the level of sales and stock planning, thus, leading to a surplus of excess stock at the end of the period.
We decided to share with you a few insider fashion secrets after we had several customers ask about the same thing. The question “What do fashion stores do with their leftover (unsold) clothes?” Good question. Have you noticed retailers often advertise “end of season stock clearance” frequently every few months? With the amount of stock the large retailers carry in terms of styles, colours and sizes, surely, not every single piece will sell? No, they don’t.
So what do they do with all these unsold merchandize? The short answer, they either dump in landfills or have it sent to factories with industrial shredders and have the clothing pieces destroyed. Much to the dismay of environmentalists and charity houses, large retailers do this in order to protect their brands and avoid their clothing lines to flood the market and land in the hands of people who they deem “undesirable” for their brand image, i.e homeless people. Despite the ethics behind this practice of destroying perfectly good clothing that should ideally be contributed towards goodwill causes to help the needy, it is a common practice with large clothing retailers. In January 2009, a New York graduate student, Cynthia Magnus reported to The New York Times to expose leading American retailer, H&M dumping bags and bags of their store clothing outside bin collections.
What did she find H&M staff doing to the excess clothing? Read more to find out the secrets of the fashion industry and what they do with unsold stock.
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