Unsold stock can be generated from overproduction, end of season to change collections and shop returns from different franchises and e-commerce operations.
As the stock is generated in big volumes the resources need to be put in place to take the challenge and maximize the commercial life of the goods that have never been used yet. Sorting is a necessary action to provide the best value and prevent these goods from being discarded for the commercial channels.
The classification process of the stocks efforts can be very different depending on the brand, the lot and the origin of the stocks. This is why we’ve developed a flexible approach with different handling stations where our staff can sort the goods to create the collections.
Normally stocks that haven’t reached the shop floor are easier to sort and might arrive to the sorting center with pre-information in the packing provided by the seller. As the next challenge, we have the arrivals of stocks collected from the franchises and other retail points, which can arrive with mixed product categories. The most challenging to classify and sort for value are the client returns categories, both from physical shops and from e-commerce.
We work on different levels to classify the stocks to reach categorized packing lists:
- Create seasons: spring-summer and autumn-winter
- Create product categories and subcategories
- Optimized assortment to ensure a variety of models
- Quality control to separate possible deffects from the regular collections.
These processes transform the stock value greatly. Sometimes stocks that were destined to be “sold in bulk” for lower prices can become organized collections with higher details and be sent directly to international shops. This makes these collections an excellent fit for off-price channels, both retail and wholesale.
Creating separate collections by brand, season, product category, assortment of models and quality control allows the distributors to select those collections that will work best for their markets, maximizing their investment and being able to choose adaptations depending on the needs of the final clients.