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What should clothes retailers do with their mountains of unsold stock?
Jun 5, 2020
In the United States, clothing sales fell 89% in April from the same month in 2019. In Britain, clothing sales sank by 50% during the same month, compared with an already-squeezed March. With all this unsold clothing, retailers need to decide the best way to manage their inflated stock levels.
Forget fast or slow fashion, now it’s ground to a halt.
A mountain of apparel stock has been piling up in stores, distribution centers, warehouses and even shipping containers during months of COVID-19 lockdowns. As retailers reopen around the world, they have to work out how to get rid of it.
Their main options? Keep it in storage, hold a sale, offload it to “off-price” retailers like TJ Maxx which sell branded goods at deep discounts, or move it to online resale sites.
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None are ideal, and all are damage-limitation.
Real estate company Knight Frank told Reuters it had fielded inquiries for excess stock for over 6 million square feet (557,500 square meters) of short-term let warehouse space in Britain since the pandemic took hold there in March.
Yet storage is only a realistic option for evergreen “basics” that are not tied to one particular year and could be sold at a later date should consumer demand bounce back - items like underwear, t-shirts, chinos and classic sneaker styles.
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