It seems plausible. Less common sizes have a lower chance of being sold out, so if they can no longer be destroyed at the end and need to be further managed at lower quantities, it can become more cost effective to simply not make them. Whether it is true or not, I don't know.
Hmm... say you estimate that you will sell 1000 items of "normal size", you stock 1000 items, and hope that you sell all of them. You end up selling 900, you have a remaining 10%.
No say you estimate that you will sell 10 items of "less common size", you stock 10 items, and hope that you sell all of them. You end up selling 9, you have a remaining 10%.
It's more like if you find one mushroom in the forest, it doesn't make sense to bring it home, get the knife, clean it, get the pan, oil the pan, fry the mushroom, eat it, clean the knife, clean the pan, put things away. It's not worth the effort for just one mushroom. If there are many, a lot of these actions only need to be taken once.
Right. So what you're saying is that instead you should be allowed to go in the forest to get another 99 mushrooms, give them the same treatment, and then throw them away? And suddenly it's worth it for one mushroom if you threw away 99 other mushrooms in the process?
Wait. I say "how does wasting 10% have more impact if you waste 10% of 10 or 10% of 1000?", and they answer "it's just not worth doing it for 1".
I just don't see how this is related to waste. Of course if it's not profitable when you sell 100% of what you produce, then it is not profitable (that's a tautology). My question is: why is it more profitable to sell the same amount but to waste more?
Turns out someone explained in another comment [1], and the "it's just not worth it for one mushroom" just does not explain it.
There is no global definition of "less common size". It varies greatly from one locale to another. At the same time, production has relatively high fixed costs and is centralized.
It would be very expensive for the global factory to customize the distribution of sizes manufactured for a retail store in Des Moines, Iowa. The order is tiny and it would require customized logistics, all of which greatly increases cost and complexity.
The missing factor in cheap-fast fashion here is warehousing costs. Companies are shredding shoes and landfilling clothing — and underproducing relative to what they could sell — rather than paying money to store products in a warehouse. One possible outcome the EU sellers can choose is to reinvest in product storage, so that they can raise their production targets to meet demand rather than to minimize product storage — at which point there is a vast demand for outlier sizes that is, today, unmet due to the unwillingness to store anything.
Normally you can overproduce clothing and make three of every size or something, knowing that it only costs a couple bucks to make another shirt, for instance. And you can throw out if you make too many. If it's illegal to throw it out, maybe that raises the price from $2 to $4 because now you have to pay for storage for a long time. So you'll buy less inventory at the start, which usually means cutting less common sizes first
Currently, unpopular sizes are over-produced because they are subsidized by popular sizes. If the unpopular sizes have to be paid for, the logistics and production processes would push producers to under-produce popular sizes.
A key insight is that what constitutes an "unpopular size" is a very local phenomenon. Every point of retail sells a different, semi-predictable distribution of sizes. It is much cheaper to ship sizes no one will buy than to manage the logistics of exactly matching local demand for a specific distribution of sizes.
I asked the same question to someone who works in this business and got an eye-opening detailed explanation that made it obvious in hindsight why things the work the way the do. The difference in product cost and logistics infrastructure was not small.
If your minimum run is 1000 of a size, and you can only really sell 500 because it's an uncommon size, and you would prefer to sell at full price or not at all, seems like making that size no longer fits your plans.
Many years ago I worked in the printing industry. F.ex. a client wants 100 products of something (e.g. posters or flyers), usually it was more cost effective to produce a 1000 (or more) and then throw away 900 the client didn't need. Obviously a huge waste of material.
Yes. But in some cases the waste will be avoided by not doing a production run at all if the minimum production quantity is too high and the law prohibits destroying the unwanted product.
That really only applies to luxury designer brands where selling at a discount can dilute the brand prestige, is Gucci, Versace, etc. really destroying unsold inventory at large volumes vs. standard retailers?
Fashionable clothes are perishable. "Nobody" wants to buy clothes from last season or last year.
Storing the clothes until they come back in fashion is expensive... and some materials really won't be useful after sitting for 10 years anyway. (Elastic bands really are perishable)
False. Not all apparel demand is for street cred, and non-‘season’ clothes can still be fashionable. ‘Last season’ is about wealth signaling and FOMO, and while I do love fashion as an entertainment and my hobby in design of it, the level of flux we have now in everyday clothing shapes and fabrics is openly hostile to the non-wealthy being clothed well. I don’t know if the EU’s regulations will work in full or at all, but I’m cheering them for trying.
A while back someone on Tumblr noted that they would buy and wear a full 360° hue spectrum of 360 t-shirts in spectrum order from 0..359, just to fuck with people’s minds as their shirt is the same color day after day until suddenly “wait, I thought your shirt was green” makes the people around them feel like they’re hallucinating en masse. This joke — well, it’s not a joke, this product with great fit would sell out even at 30° intervals! — T-shirts are shaped the same year after year, and fast fashion has had to resort to mining old brand imagery to try and convince people to buy them. Meanwhile, it’s impossible to find unprinted t-shirts at outlier sizes, because that’s slightly less profitable than waves of shapeless L-XL junk. Yes, I’m fine with Hot Topic collaborations, but they need to stop being the market majority.
Because it won't take twice as long, but 10x as long. There's typically a large rush on a new design, followed by a slow tick in sales. Meanwhile you have to pay to warehouse it, pay tax on the inventory, etc.
It's really different depending on if the manufacturer has Brand reputation or is just a replaceable good. For no name jeans, they probably just keep making them and donate the leftovers.
For a high-end designer dress, may be better to not manufacture large or small sizes that don't sell frequently.