To ask what happens to all the sale clothes that don't sell?

[CowGirlTonya]

I've been browsing the clothing sales online. Most shops have just done their second or third round of reductions so there are amazing bargains to be had. But I am shocked at the volume of items that are still available. We're nearly mid-Jan, so the sales online can't last much longer.

There is A LOT of sale stock left, both high street and nice high end items as well. I've just spied a gorgeous pair of boots marked 50% off down from £850 to £425, but still well above my budget. I'm praying they'll somehow make it to 75% off, but when do retailers give up and stop discounting and remove from online? There's loads of high end luxury sale items at the moment, which I assume are even harder to shift than high street items.

AIBU to question what on Earth happens to all of the items that don't sell? Where do they go? And do you think retailers will take learnings from this and reduce the number of items they bring out in future seasons / collections to try and avoid such a surplus of un-sold sale stock in the future?

Interested in this too. I know they don't sell all their clothes

I think it depends on the brand when it's high end merch - someone once told me that big designers will destroy unsold clothes because it dilutes the brand if poor people are seen wearing them - don't know if it's true but it wouldn't surprise me.

The red cross shop near me has new zara and cos stuff with the labels cut out. Thrift+ also has a lot of high street brands that is brand new or faulty so I'm guessing that's ex sale stock.

High end stuff - largely destroyed. I think they're trying to be more environmentally friendly by repurposing materials where possible but brand dilution is a serious concern for £££ retailers.

Mid/Low end stuff - gets passed to secondary markets who then sell it on non-branded in some cases. The original retailer no longer has to find storage for it and the secondary market generally get it sold, for an absolute bargain sometimes.

Can't answer for all retailers but I know for sure I've seen some items come out in the sale for which I bought the same thing several years earlier (also in a sale).

I would assume some of it, particularly the high street clothing would get shifted to discount stores like TK Maxx etc as I've seen brands like Zara etc there before.

But what about the higher end / luxury designer items? Do they all go off to the likes of Net-a-Porter, etc?

I've just seen these trousers on the Harrods site and I actually quite like them. But no way in hell I'd ever pay £575 for them. They'd need to be marked down to £125 before I'd even consider them, but I know they'll never be marked down that low. At least on the Harrods site. I would suspect the people willing to pay £575 in the sale would be more concerned about their clothing being the latest season anyway, so may rule them out because of that too (or they're just not to anyone's taste).

And then there's the lovely items from smaller known independent British designers. What happens to them? And what happens to the branded / designer items that the small independent boutiques can't sell? Can they also fob them off to discount retailers?

There was news a few years ago that Burberry (I think?) chose to burn their excess stock rather than put it at a heavy discount to shift it because they didn't want their brand associated with lower income people who couldn't normally afford their clothing. Does this happen regularly with other brands too?

I'm full of questions today! This is really intriguing me!

Sorry - my reply overlapped with some of the others!

Such a shame and what a waste to know the items are just being destroyed!

I guess there's always the outlets as well, but so much of the stuff in outlets is made for the outlets, so I wonder if they then get this problem there with that stock too?

I also wonder if some stock is collected and sent to other countries / markets where they think it might sell better?

About 40,000 tonnes are dumped in the Atacama desert every year...

Some gets distributed to discount stores like TKMaxx.
Some sold in bulk to places like market stall holders.
Some either sold or distributed to be sold in charity shops.
Some... unfortunately....just get chucked in the bin.

Jeeze!! Thanks for mentioning this! I've just had to google that. It really is a tragic site! I wish every person - especially young trendy types who shop fast fashion would take a look and read the article I've just seen.

It obviously can't all be blamed on cheap fast fashion because there's loads of luxury items that remain unsold as well.

This was very eye opening! www.aljazeera.com/amp/gallery/2021/11/8/chiles-desert-dumping-ground-for-fast-fashion-leftovers

Tk Maxx

Outlet's

Next clearance

Then charities

There's an interesting podcast about Shein linked in the article I shared below. It's really quite depressing

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-take/id1438817292?i=1000587466708

I've seen one frugi jacket in my t k maxx (nowhere near the size I needed) and no mini Boden things.

I’d be interested to know this too. I’ve decided not to buy anything new this year (for environmental reasons) but I think buying clothes in the sale is okay if the alternative is that they are destroyed.

Destruction is not the norm (in luxury at least) and hasn't been for quite a while. I work in luxury and it has been banned for a long time within my company.

If something is saleable there are various options:

• sample sales (staff and public)
• brand outlet store
• online/physical sample sale or discounted companies (like Arlettie and the Outnet etc)
• discount retailers like TK Maxx (less likely)
• charity donation

Brands can't really control what retailers do with their stock but the big retailers have ethics policies which wouldn't allow destruction either.

It an item isn't fit for sale (eg soiled or damaged) it would be recycled.

To my knowledge the vast majority of clothes which are destroyed/dumped are fast fashion where in some cases if a product is returned they won't re-sell it and will just write it off.

Next has an outlet store on a retail park in a downmarket area of Leicester. Lots of the unsold stock goes there. Whether through necessity or thrift, some people really will buy any old tat if it’s cheap enough.

There's a Simon Reeve programme where he is in Chile and pulling immaculate high end clothing out of the ground. Tonnes are just buried somewhere out of sight of the shoppers.

I work for a major retailer - unsold sale stuff is split 3 ways between outlet stores, secondary market (small percentage) and charities.

I used to work in Debenhams. Lots of stuff would get sent back to the warehouse and come out again in a future sale. Clothes from the millenium were hanging around for a couple of years iirc, thought we'd never see the end of it, presumably there was so much left unsold that selling it for 70% off was preferable to the alternative.

As far as I know at least some clothing that didn't sell was sold by weight for sorting/recycling/shipping abroad to make it someone elses problem.

Some retailers do donate unsold items to charity as it's more tax efficient/environmentally friendly. Our charity gets frequent huge donations from some big name companies which are unsold stock and returns and we then agree to 'de-label' the items in return such as cut the labels/remove barcodes. These are then sent out to the charity shops to sell as new at whatever price the manager thinks is relevant to their own area etc. Our shop is in a fairly big city with quite a few poorer areas so we sell corporate donations at fairly low prices and have loads of regular customers. We do check what the original price would have been so that we don't undersell big ticket items such as selling a pair of £200 trainers for a fiver (we'd sell those for about £50+ but they'd still sell in under 24 hours). As a downside we do get targeted by shoplifters a lot!

A certain online multi item retailer donates stock/returns to a large number of different charities which is great and 99% of it is sellable but very occasionally it's a bit dodgy. In winter 2021 we had a vast amount of kiddies nightwear from them but none of it had labels of any kind (ie no CE /washing/ materials labels ) so we felt it would be irresponsible to sell it. The material felt like it would go up like a bonfire if it so much as looked at a match so we couldn't even 'rag' it and pass on to a rag company as that felt irresponsible too if they then resold it. So a member of staff spent an entire afternoon cutting every item up with scissors into small pieces and then we had to put it all in our bins for it to go into landfill - absolutely heart breaking and a shame on this company who sold this substandard stuff to begin with because the charity had to pay to dispose of it's rubbish.

I know which company's do donate to charities and I do try to avoid those who deliberately destroy/dump excess stock but the fault lies with manufacturers who make far too much out of cheap materials to start with and the public who like their fast fashion.

A lot is sold on marketplaces around the world not just ebay/Amazon

I used to work in an outlet store for a big catalogue (not sure if they’re around anymore in the days of online shopping). We’d get all the crap they couldn’t shift through the rounds of sales. A lot of stuff sat in our storeroom for years apparently. We were in an outlet mall in the middle of nowhere so I suppose the rent was cheap and they weren’t too bothered about wasting space. They did occasionally clear stuff out. It often got donated to charity shop chains.

I know that a lot of high street stuff also gets detagged and sold on sites like Everything5pounds.

I was reading an article somewhere that there are companies that take higher end last season and bundle them up in a mystery box subscription. I cannot remember what it's call. Business booming.

The next sale often regurgitates stuff. I've seen stuff in their winter sale that was in their summer sale

@JW13
I disagree with your comment about companies not dictating how charities deal with their stock donations. We had a recent mass corporate donator who made the charity sign an agreement dictating exactly how much we could sell the stock for and we still had to de-label it ourselves. It was a utter pain in the arse as the prices set were far too high for our area and little actually sold. It's now doing a tour of different shops to find the 'right' market for what is really awful stuff.