[blueblimp]

Seems bizarre. It's not like companies didn't want to sell it--they'd prefer to have the revenue. This is just kicking them then while they're down. I wonder if it will reduce risk-taking since it increases the downside of launching an unpopular product.

[bryant]

> Seems bizarre. It's not like companies didn't want to sell it--they'd prefer to have the revenue. This is just kicking them then while they're down. I wonder if it will reduce risk-taking since it increases the downside of launching an unpopular product.

Companies (Burberry is mentioned, but it goes unsaid that others engage in it) routinely burn stock to preserve exclusivity[1]. It's a pretty serious issue.

[1] https://www.vogue.com/article/fashion-waste-problem-fabrics-...

[Aurornis]

The majority of clothing produced is not for exclusive brands.

This is a very niche feature of low volume brands.

[thedougd]

It's the nature of high fashion brands. a $2000 item may cost $200 to create. The high margin is based on exclusitivity. They would rather destroy it than sell it at $300.

[bryant]

> They would rather destroy it than sell it at $300.

This is exactly it. The actual landed cost is 1/10th of the sales price, and most of the rest of the margin pads the marketing and exclusivity machine. If for instance LV starts selling their $200-landed Neverfull bags at $500 or even $1,000, all the infrastructure sustaining the image becomes unsustainable.

[kmeisthax]

Related note: aren't Louis Vuitton bags being made so crap nowadays that even their own anti-counterfeiting staff can't tell what's real and what's not? I remember hearing of someone who made wallets out of discarded LV bags and got harassed for it by the company.

My personal opinion is that the business model of selling status items - specifically those which only have status because of an artificially limited supply they control - is inherently predatory and should be restricted. Not because I'm the morality police and want to stop people from buying a bag that says "I spent $2000 on a bag", but because there is nothing that stops the company from cost-reducing that to oblivion. If you are going to sell a $2,000 bag, it should be marketed on quality, not a cult.

[stackskipton]

Clothing items tend to have quality roof that past that, it doesn't matter and it's not 2000$ for handbag.

Clothing has been used as wealth/class indicator for thousands of years, trying to change that will be extremely difficult lift.

[Mordisquitos]

> I wonder if it will reduce risk-taking since it increases the downside of launching an unpopular product.

That is a feature, not a bug. Risk-taking in "apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear" which results in wasted resources is not something to incentivise.

[buzzerbetrayed]

Counter point: all of human existence.

We wouldn’t have 99% of the technological advancements we’ve made without a fuckton of failure and waste.

[Mordisquitos]

Counter point to the counter point: also all of human existence.

The "fuckton of failure and waste" which has brought technological advancements to humanity didn't come from destroying unsold clothing, and the risks involved in actual technological advancements are orders of magnitude larger than the risk of not being able to destroy unsold consumer products without penalty.

[isodev]

But now that we do, we know how to be smarter about it going forward

[reeredfdfdf]

Most likely these clothes will be just dumped to poorer parts of Africa and Asia, where they're finally sold for peanuts, or in worst case dumped into a landfill. That's what already happens for a lot of used clothes that people give away.

IMO selling the clothes to people that otherwise couldn't afford them is always better than destroying them, so EU is doing the right thing here.

[vscode-rest]

So many clothes are already shipped to poorer parts of africa that it ends up being essentially indistinguishable from a landfill.

There are more clothes produced worldwide than there are people to wear them. Shipping unwanted refuse to poor counties is treating them as a landfill and patting yourself on the back.

[snakeboy]

> I wonder if it will reduce risk-taking

I understand this argument in engineering and medical fields, but in clothing industry, does incentivising risk and innovation really matter that much?

[subscribed]

No, it's not just Zara and other fast fashion.

Premium brands really don't want to seel it UNLESS it's to the right people for the high price: https://fashionlawjournal.com/deadstock-destruction-why-fash...

[wao0uuno]

Oh no, poor fast fashion companies won't be able to continue maximizing their profits by using slave labor to manufacture ginormous amounts of garbage that goes out of fashion in a week. Guess they'll have to reduce their garbage output or switch to manufacturing quality stuff that can hang out on a store's shelf for a bit longer. The fucking horror. Fuck them.

[saubeidl]

It costs a company nothing to donate an unsold coat to a homeless shelter.