You know at the end of sales when items still haven't been sold? what do shops do with them?

[BigButtons]

I don't get what happens to them. Logically they should reduce them in price until they are sold. Do companies chuck goods away- sell them on somewhere else?
Surely every unsold item is profit lost and selling something at a greatly reduced price has to be better than not selling it at all?

I did some work with a well known sports brand some years ago - they tended to send shop deadstock to TKMaxx and their product returns (shop and internet) to either a refugee charity in Belgium (I think stuff ended up at Sangatte), charity shops and local grassroots sports organisations. I got about 20 palettes of stuff from them at one point which was very very useful.

If it’s luxury and it doesn’t sell above a certain price it’s either bought by the likes of TKMaxx or sold to staff at a discount or destroyed - although leglisation is coming in to prevent this.

Lower range items have a similar path but swap TK Maxx for Charity shops or “the rag man” who then sells it on. They will try and circulate it within the UK for instance (so people with markets can buy in bulk; influencers can buy hauls to sell online). If the rag trade can’t shift it they sell it off to counties in the global south in massive bails. Because the quality is declining it ends up on beaches, whereas once upon a time it was an actual trade for the markets in those counties (think places in continents including Africa, South America and Central Asia).

Some brands that are more “ethical” might send it to a recycling centre but that only works with certain materials and the tech isn’t developed.

If you have a friend working in retail - ask them when their next staff sale is on.

World of books buy them at scrap value for resale through their global platforms or recycling if they hold no value to them. They also take all the leftovers from charity shops. Sometimes they get rare or valuable ones in amongst all the millions of others.

Unwanted books, that is.

I tell a lie, the programme I listened to was about on-line fashion returns. The Bottom Line with Evan Davis. A huge amount of clothes are never worn.

Years ago when I worked at TopShop it was put back in the stock room and dragged back out at the same sale price for every sale. Some of the stuff was years old and tatty. It was quite a large store though so plenty of space in the stock room, I’m not sure about smaller stores.

TK Maxx, charity shops (often with instructions about how many items can be on the shop floor at a time), sometimes seconds shops and sometimes they eBay.

Outlet
Tkmaxx
EBay shops

I used to work for a well-known charity. Several higher end High Street retailers would donate their old stock to us. Many would have rules as to what we could do with it. For example remove tags (so it didn’t look brand new), not able to sell online, some locations where they had shops themselves we would not be able to sell, we were not able to publicise that we had the stock, and only sell a few items at a time.
M&S would often give us their customer returns which could not be repackaged or put on sale again for some reason (marked or obviously worn by the customer!).

When I worked in retail many moons ago, unsold sale stuff used get boxed up and sent to outlet stores.
It was just a load of random crap tbh.
We also found about 30 big boxes in the basement full of old sale stuff that was from years ago. It was very musty and none of it was what I’d consider decent. Some of that got sent off to the outlets too!

Gosh. Seems crazy that they would destroy it.
makes sense re sending to TK Maxx and such like. I was hoping they would give to homeless charities or third world countries.
silly me.

Giving it to 3rd world countries can do more harm than good, it means people selling clothes there don’t make any money and often the clothing is not suitable because of the style or climate.

Some brands like Hush hold sample sales. They have a range of items from old stock, returns, damaged items, clothes worn on
. A fun jumble sale and you can get some great bargains if you are prepared to rummage through boxes.