Where do shops send unsold clothing?

[ellsybells]

I've heard that they have to destroy it, but is that true? Do you ever regret having not bought an item at the end of a season and wish you could track it down? (Assuming the shop doesn't have an outlet) I once bought a much-loved skirt from kew in the next size up at a huge discount online but that was only cos they were closing down for ages....

Some retailers have an eBay store eg French Connection and House of Fraser

Some shops send them to a charity store called New Life. They sell them and the money goes to help premature babies etc (I think). You can get some real bargains there. There is also a lot of crap.

If it's a big chain then all the old stock will be consolidated and sent to an outlet store or kept in the warehouse until the next sale where it gets snet back out to store and reduced further. Some shops 'job' the stock, selling it as a job lot at a very low price (not sure if this still happens, very old practice), some remove the branded label and give it to charity if it is very old.

Doesn't tkmaxx get a load of last season's clothes?

I think the job lot thing still happens.if you look on ebay (especially for White Stuff for some reason) there is heaps of eBay shops selling the dresses in a multitude of sizes, brand new just with all labels and tags removed so that can't be returned to store.

I thought this was how TK Maxx exists?!

...well, for 'branded' stuff anyway

i live near a lands end factory, they have an outlet store where they sell stuff and they do friends and family days where everything is massively reduced, coats are £5!! anything left after that gets sent to the local charity shops so i'm told.

We get a lot of your unsold stock here in SA. There are cheap shops here where you find George from Asda, Atmosphere ( which I think is primark isn't it?) , m&s, h&m and just today saw River Island jeans. I think they are probably sold off in a job lot. You will never find these brands in our larger stores, but those shops that have an awful lot of imported Chinese stuff as well. You have to have time as everything has to be tried on, especially when it comes to American stuff as their sizing is way off from ours.

In fact my mum bought ds a tshirt from Asda one year. It had a particular logo on that was him to a tee. When she came over, I had bought the very same tshirt here from that shop, for about a third of the price....

Leather Lane market in London has a few stalls with high street sale/end of line clothing. I've seen M&S, French Connection, Topshop, DPerkins etc, and occasionally designer or high end high street stuff too. Usually the labels are cut. I guess they buy them in job lots. Some stuff is very recent, other stuff not so. Last year I bought a £50 Topshop blazer for £10.
On the downside, it can be a bit depressing to see stuff you've paid full price for. I bought some shoes from Next for £55 - about 2 years later I was in Leather Lane and saw a stall with a massive pile of my shoes for a tenner. I didn't wear them much after that - didn't like them so much after seeing so many of them piled up looking like sad 'rejects'

They don't destroy anything unless it is faulty. I work in fashion head offices and it gets sold in outlets, or on ebay or the clearance section of the brands website. Eventually everything goes. Stock that is jobbed off and appears on markets is usually spare stock the retailer never took from the supplier or didnt pass the retailers quality checks so the supplier sells it to a 'jobber' to get rid of it. They are legally meant to remove the brands labels before it goes onto the market stalls but they never do bother.

What are the terms for buying such a stock from a supplier? You have to own a company? I've heard that sometimes you can buy such a stock by auction, is that true?