What Happens to Stock That Does Not Sell

The three possible answers

Whoever is selling for you will do one of three things with goods that do not go.

1. 1Return them to you. You pay the transport, you get the pallet back, and you are exactly where you started but poorer.
2. 2Store them and charge you. Storage fees on stock that has already proved it will not sell is the worst outcome of the three.
3. 3Keep selling until they go, usually by bundling them with other stock.

Only the third one solves your original problem, which was that you had stock you needed gone.

Why unsold stock exists at all

Almost nothing is genuinely unsellable. What actually happens is that an item is not worth the labour of selling it on its own. A single low value item can cost more in handling, photography and packing than it will ever return, so it sits there being technically saleable and practically ignored.

That is a solvable problem, and the solution is not a lower price. It is a bigger lot. Put twenty of those items together and the labour is spread across one sale instead of twenty.

Bundling, and why it works

Bundling is how a live seller keeps the tail moving. Odd singles, mismatched quantities and low value oddments get grouped into a single lot that is genuinely attractive to somebody, and the whole thing sells in one go.

The buyer gets a deal, the labour maths works, and the consignor gets money for stock that would otherwise have been returned or written off. It is why our sell through rate is 100 percent and why nothing comes back to the consignor.

The clause to get in writing

Before your stock leaves, get a written answer to these four.

• What happens to anything that has not sold after a given period?
• Who pays the transport if it comes back?
• Is there a storage charge, and when does it start?
• Can items be bundled to clear them, and does that need my approval?

Our consignment terms answer all four on the page rather than in a conversation, which is a reasonable standard to hold anybody to.

The number that tells you the truth

Ask for the sell through rate. If somebody cannot tell you what proportion of consigned stock actually sells, they either do not measure it or they do not want to say. Both are informative.

A high sell through rate is not a marketing claim, it is a statement about whether the operation has a way of clearing the tail. If it does, unsold stock is not your problem. If it does not, it will be.