Fabric or garment stock lot refers to excess or surplus product inventory that is available for purchase at discounted prices. This term used commonly to describe fabrics rolls or bolts and garments are sold in bulk by its weight or quantity. There can be multiple reasons of stock lot such as, cancellation of shipment due to some reasons, unsold inventories, fast fashion, over production etc. every garment exporter manufacturing for international retailers or brands is producing about 5% to 7% extra pieces per style for adjustment of any rejections or shortfall that may occur during final packaging. Fresh inventory stock lot is of new or running season products that is sold by brands and their authorized distributors, whereas, e-commerce liquidation stock is sold by e-commerce and their sellers, such as Cloudtail of Amazon, W S Retails of Flipkart etc., it is an old stock, perhaps 2 to 3 seasons old. Every year, around thousand shipments of surplus textile/apparel products being traded; top exporting countries are India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Kenya etc. and top importing countries are Kuwait, United States, India, Philippines, Malaysia, Sudan, UAE, Canada etc.
Stock lot or surplus is expected while manufacturing is at big scale, in both, textile and apparel, stock lot is a part of the business, it can be reduced by using various trick and technologies such as ERP solution, Market Intelligence, maximum production efficiency etc., but it can not be completely removed. There are multiple solutions to get rid of stock lot, depending upon the quantity and variety, the producers find the solution. If the quantity is small, it can be sold out to local shops, or it can be purchased by companies/professionals deals into upcycling or re-using the products. For big quantity, there are traders or liquidators buys stock lot in large quantity at a very negligible cost and resell them. Both the above solutions are helpful for brands or manufacturers in terms of making money (though they have to sell the products with heavy discounts) and manage their supply chain management.
Stock lot business is emerged as potential and growing business, the benefits and challenges are as append:
- Buyer can buy branded apparel stock lot at much cheaper price and can resell it.
- Product is ready to sell, designed by popular designer with brand tag. No need of production planning, lead time, QC and packaging set-up etc.
- The main challenge is, these products are assorted, they are of different designs, type of products and sizes, hence, there can be mismatch in size, color etc.
- Old fashion/outdated fashion. Due to the fast fashion, selling old fashion stock lot becomes a troublesome task.
Thanks to the internet, there are many global B2B portals and marketplaces available to sell stock lot. Many traders and agencies are also associated in the business of buy and sell textile/apparel stock lots across the world.
