How you can manage excess inventory

The last thing any small business needs is excess inventory, as it is dead money sitting there taking up room in your business. You need to clear it out – but how can you do it without damaging your brands’ credibility.

Having a sale can damage the long term profitability of your business, as it affects the value perception of your product. Many brands avoid ever having public sales, instead offering discount discounts through their newsletters to their subscribers. Other options to move excess image can include:

• Take off the website for a while and then reload it as a “best seller” or “back by popular demand” – this psychological trick is used by many fashion brands, as consumers look for bestsellers if they lack confidence in knowing what to buy

• Restyle the pieces and reshoot them – sometimes it isn’t the product that is the problem in why it hasn’t sold, it could be down to the images or the styling

• Have a pop-up shop or trunk show to clear stock where you can offer an even discount

• Rework it – is there some way of altering the product to make it more saleable – use is an upcycled piece that can appeal to more conscious shoppers

• Sell it through third-party sales platforms and sample sales sites

• Give it away through marketing approaches such as competitions, giving to charities, gifting it to influencers