Unsold goods are not a waste problem. They are a design, data and collaboration problem.
Preventing and managing unsold goods
Every season, fashion and textile companies end up with stock that never reaches a customer: unsold finished products, surplus materials, returns, samples. With the EU’s ban on destroying unsold apparel, this has become a compliance question, not just a sustainability one.
The Circular Fashion Manifesto 2026, published by the Monitor for Circular Fashion (M4CF) at SDA Bocconi, tackles it in Chapter 4, “Preventing and managing unsold goods”. Its core message: the best way to manage unsold stock is to avoid creating it, and the second best is to have a plan for every unit that still slips through.
1. Prevent: act before the stock exists
The framework groups prevention into six macro-strategies:
- Value chain collaboration, working with material suppliers and involving designers in eco-design
- Data collection, covering stock mapping, visibility through 3D technology and better forecasting
- Offer rationalisation, meaning more durable products and a leaner assortment
- Design and prototyping, through digital prototypes and B2B training on in-stock materials
- Flexible production, with more make-to-order
- Customer education, on care, maintenance and returns
2. Manage: give every unit a destination
For what remains, the framework maps a full range of options: resale through digital and physical off-price channels, internal sales to employees, donation to non-profit organisations, internal reprocessing, upcycling and self-upcycling, rental, and, only as a last resort, controlled disposal. Disposal is tracked as the share of unsold stock sent to landfill or incineration.
3. Monitor and communicate
What gets measured gets managed. The framework closes with monitoring, consumer awareness campaigns and the sharing of best practices at B2B level.
Where data sharing makes the difference
Two threads run through the whole chapter: sharing data along the value chain and collaborating across it. Without visibility on what is available, no reuse channel can work.
This is the logic behind SecondFlow, an M4CF circularity project by YKK and Deda Stealth. Unsold YKK zippers and buttons are listed on B/Samply, the B2B platform developed by Deda Stealth, as an alternative to disposal. Access is reserved for educational institutions, non-profit organisations and fashion associations. At launch, 2,820 SKUs across two product categories were uploaded, and 450 units are currently being purchased.
It is a concrete example of what the Manifesto describes: stock mapped, made visible to the right audience and redirected to reuse, with no destruction involved.
The takeaway
Preventing and managing unsold goods takes both sides of the framework at once: smarter planning upstream, and a clear, traceable path for whatever is left. Platforms that make surplus visible are part of that infrastructure.