In my experience in other physical goods industries (not textiles specifically) there is a big difference between products that are good but aren’t ever sold for some reason and products that are deemed not sellable for some reason.

For example, if a custom returns a product that was opened but they claim was never used (worn in this case) you can’t sell it to someone else as a new item. With physical products these go through refurbishing channels if there are enough units to warrant it.

What if a batch of products is determined to have some QA problems? You can’t sell it as new, so it has to go somewhere. One challenge we discovered the hard way is that there are a lot of companies who will claim to recycle your products or donate them to good causes in other countries, but actually they’ll just end up on eBay or even in some cases being injected back in to retail channels through some process we could never figure out. At least with hardware products we could track serial numbers to discover when this was happening.

It gets weirder when you have a warranty policy. You start getting warranty requests for serial numbers that were marked as destroyed or that never made it to the retail system. Returned serial numbers are somehow re-appearing as units sold as new. This is less of a problem now that Amazon has mechanisms to avoid inventory co-mingling (if you use them) but for a while we found ourselves honoring warranty claims for items that, ironically enough, had already been warrantied once and then “recycled” by our recycling service.

So whenever I see “unsold” I think the situation is probably more complicated than this overview suggests. It’s generally a good thing to avoid destroying perfectly good inventory for no good reason, but inventory that gets disposed isn’t always perfectly good either. I assume companies will be doing something obvious to mark the units as not for normal sale like punching holes in tags or marking them somewhere]

I buy mostly from liquidators, where everything is sold as-is, but that doesn't stop end users from trying to make a claim, so many manufacturers often have methods for marking items that are not covered by the warranty. For example, Ryobi brands the items with a plastic welder, leaving a tell-tale wavy mark.

A robust liquidation market does a lot to prevent waste, and it reduces the cost of living for those who participate, so finding ways to allow products to be truly sold as-is is vital, otherwise the next most logical option is to put those items in a landfill.

It's also important that there's no legislative hurdles to seelling items as-is, or there may be no legal way to sell a salvage products without completely overhauling them, which is usually not cost effective.

> companies who will claim to recycle your products or donate them to good causes in other countries, but actually they’ll just end up on eBay or even in some cases being injected back in to retail channels

Isn't that good though? Unless the defects make the product somehow dangerous, this means that it found its way to users who are OK with it, thus avoiding waste. And someone even made money in the process.

(all assuming the product is not sold as "new")

Beautiful insight into processes that most of us never see, thanks!

My initial thought was "reusing an item is even better than recycling" but then realized that a warrantied item is quite likely to have flaws and get warrantied again very soon.

I have recently been trolling eBay for used computing equipment rather than buying new, after it was suggested I sell my old hardware that I don't think anyone would want. And man has that been a great experience, it's way more fun than browsing Newegg or doing pc part picking from new catalogs. I need neither the compute hardware nor the cost savings but it's a fun activity on its own, not unlike so many computer games where you do deck optimization or similar.

I heard that the clothes especially from high end brands are destroyed to keep the value of the brand high ie not to cannibalize sales. Which doesnt seem like good enough reason to burn 300.000+t of clothes (that created untold emissions)

They have exceptions for manufacturing defects

> What if a batch of products is determined to have some QA problems?

If you had bothered to read TFA, you'd have understood that the rules only apply to products that have fully passed QA, were being kept as stock but ended up not selling. They don't apply to experimental batches, to defective or damaged items, etc...

This is also very detrimental to buyer experience. When you search for a specific new product, prices from different sellers can vary widely. Most often there is no way to tell what is the reason for the difference. Is the cheapest offer simply the best deal, or is it a refurbished product, or even a fake?

> aren’t ever sold for some reason and products that are deemed not sellable for some reason.

I think some brands destroy the items to create an artificial scarcity that keeps their stuff 'exclusive'.

> What if a batch of products is determined to have some QA problems? You can’t sell it as new, so it has to go somewhere.

Isn't this TKMaxx's entire business model?

> What if a batch of products is determined to have some QA problems?

Isn't this why Ross exists? It's where I first heard the phrase "slightly irregular".

> had already been warrantied once and then “recycled” by our recycling service.

Couldn't this be prevented by, say, sticking it on a drill press and drilling a large hole in it, and then recycling it?

> What if a batch of products is determined to have some QA problems?

Not covered by this regulation in spirit and (probably, haven't read it yet) in text. The spirit of the regulation is targeting fast-fashion on-prem retailers (think H&M, Primark, Zara and the likes) and online retailers like Shein, who have heaps of products that just aren't sold because they're not wanted - and also the occasional luxury brand trying to maintain scarcity [1].

> but for a while we found ourselves honoring warranty claims for items that, ironically enough, had already been warrantied once and then “recycled” by our recycling service.

Yikes. That's something worth filing a lawsuit claim or at the very least terminating the business relationship.

[1] https://theweek.com/95179/luxury-brands-including-burberry-b...

What became of the relationship with the recycling company?