Liquidation plan · aged menswear stock
Old stock with defects does not liquidate the way overstock does. You cannot run a straight sample sale, because a sample sale sells newness and you do not have any. What you sell instead is depth and price, and that only works if the sorting is done before the doors open.
Wool that has sat for years in Lebanese humidity is the single thing that can turn 6000 pieces into zero. Moth larvae eat the good jackets while you are busy pricing the bad ones, and one visible pinhole makes a shopper distrust every rack in the room.
Anything already holed is not a discount item, it is Grade C. It goes to the bale pile in phase 03 and never reaches the floor.
Every decision after this one depends on a number you do not have yet. Not the total, you know the total. What you need is how the stock distributes across sizes, because that is what decides how many real selling days you have.
| Column | Values |
|---|---|
| Category | suit, blazer, trouser, dress shirt, other |
| Size | as labelled, EU or collar cm |
| Brand | name, or blank |
| Tags on | yes / no |
| Defect | none, stain, hole, fade, missing button, seam |
| Grade | A, B or C, decided at the table |
Grade at the same table where you count. Handling a piece twice across 6000 pieces is where the week disappears.
The output that matters is a size curve per category. In practice roughly two thirds of menswear stock lands in the middle sizes and the tails are close to unsellable locally. The curve tells you whether you have a three weekend sale or a one weekend sale, before you have signed for a venue.
The temptation is to sneak C onto the floor at a low price. Do not. Word travels in one afternoon and it costs you the second and third weekend.
Flat tiers by category, one price per tier, marked down on a published schedule. Nobody prices a piece, nobody negotiates, and the staff never has to make a judgement call.
| Grade B item | Wk 1 | Wk 2 | Wk 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two piece suit | $35 | $25 | $15 |
| Blazer | $20 | $15 | $10 |
| Trouser | $10 | $7 | $5 |
| Dress shirt | $7 | $5 | $3 |
| As is table, anything | $3 | $3 | $2 |
These sit below normal sample sale prices on purpose. The stock is old and some of it is flawed, and the honest move is also the commercial one: put the age in the opening price instead of defending it at the register.
Publish the markdown dates on the sign at the door on day one. It gives the hesitant a reason to come back and the eager a reason to buy now.
This is the whole trick with tailoring, and it is why most clothing liquidations underperform. A man who is a 52 should be able to walk to one rack where every single jacket fits him. With your volume he finds forty options instead of two, and that is what turns one sale into three.
Everything unsold leaves as one lot to a bale buyer or exporter, priced by weight, collected the morning after the sale ends. Call them in week two, not week four, so the price is agreed while you still have the option to say no.
Do not put the remainder back into storage. Storage is the reason there are six thousand pieces in the first place.
Illustrative only, on a 6000 piece mix of jackets, shirts and trousers. Replace every line with the real count from phase 02.
The number that moves this most is the size curve, not the pricing. If the stock skews to dead sizes, the floor sale line falls by half and the bale line barely rises to meet it, because bale buyers pay by weight and do not care what size it is.