The Post-Holiday Challenge: Returns and Dead Stock
The winter holiday season, with its Black Friday bonanzas and Christmas shopping frenzies, is the most lucrative time of year for fashion manufacturers and retailers. But come January, many businesses face the less glamorous side of this peak period: a tidal wave of returned, faulty and dead stock items. What do you do with surplus items that can’t be resold? How do you protect your brand while making sustainable choices?
Why Dead Stock Threatens Your Brand & The Environment
Fashion designers often use unique fabrics and styles to create a distinctive brand look. To protect the desirability and value of these designs, manufacturers and retailers must take measures to ensure returns and dead stock are either sold at appropriately discounted prices or destroyed to prevent them from falling into the hands of unscrupulous traders.
This is particularly important at the turn of the year when surplus stock is often abundant, old collections are being cleared out to prepare for the new season, and consumers are watchful for bargains. But what should be done with the glut of garments?
Offloading unwanted clothing onto developing countries has created enormous, polluting landfills that may take years or even decades to remove. Transporting textile waste halfway around the globe is also heavy on carbon footprint, while the recycling potential of many materials is literally going to waste.
How Waste Can Be Turned Into Opportunity
Throwing unsold stock into landfill isn’t just bad for the environment; it’s bad for business. Consumers of today are much more interested in balancing sustainability with fashion, so while they want to stay on-trend they also expect manufacturers to manage product lifecycle more ethically.
Mindful of the demand for sustainability and a general leaning towards a circular economy, Avena Group has developed a garment and textile destruction and recycling process called SECUREBRAND. This specialised service not only guarantees the secure destruction of textile production waste and unsold or returned clothing but also exploits its recycling potential.
In line with Avena’s commitment to ‘zero waste to landfill’, the byproducts of the textile shredding process undergo a three-stage sortation procedure. The highest-quality fibres from the shredding process are respun into new yarn; this can be used to make new textiles. Shorter fibres that can’t be spun still have manufacturing value – they are converted into heat and sound insulation and upholstery padding. The minute percentage of byproducts that cannot be repurposed are used to generate energy.
Watch below to see how our solution worked for rail provider Northern.
The Benefits of SECUREBRAND
To summarise the commercial and environmental advantages of partnering with Avena Group for your textile waste management, SECUREBRAND:
- protects against surplus stock entering the market illegally, where unscrupulous traders could damage your brand’s value and exclusivity
- reduces the volume of textiles being sent to landfills, where they are a major source of harmful emissions
- extends the lifecycle of synthetic and natural fibres, reducing the energy demands of new production
- contributes towards a circular economy
- aligns your business with sustainable practices that resonate with today’s eco-conscious consumers.
If post-season dead stock is giving you a headache or you’d like to improve the security and sustainability of your brand, give Avena Group a call today.
Interesting in learning more about our services? Speak to one of our experts today.
Looking for a quick quote for secure destruction & recycling? Get a quote today.