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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 fo

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]

throwaway198846 9mo ago
They have exceptions for manufacturing defects
morkalork 9mo ago
What became of the relationship with the recycling company?
WalterBright 9mo ago
> 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?
- xp84 9mo ago
  Probably, but part of the point of outsourcing the recycling was that you wouldn't have to set up infrastructure, process and people for that. If they weren't crooked, you could even have customers ship the products directly to the recycler. To drill it first, then you are paying for shipping twice, on an item that is already worthless to you.
- Doohickey-d 9mo ago
  This does happen: for example in Macbook repair, it is common to buy defective motherboards, in order to salvage the chips off them (which are apple-specific, hence not purchasable elsewhere). Those boards often come from China, and often have holes drilled in them, I guess exactly to prevent them from being repaired. It's a shame, because some of those boards could (and would, they are valuable enough) be fully repaired by a skilled repair person. Instead, the chips are picked off and the rest goes to waste. I did buy a batch once that didn't have holes drilled, and they all turned out to have all sorts of strange, often random issues, so I suspect those were RMAs that somehow "fell off the back of a truck" and escaped the drilling.
  - p1anecrazy 9mo ago
    Why do you think the ones with holes didn‘t have the same defect?
  - krackers 9mo ago
    There is this insane video where someone actually does repair one of the prototype boards that have been drilled https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reQq8fx4D0Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reQq8fx4D0Q
dlcarrier 9mo ago
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.
- Aurornis 9mo ago
  > so many manufacturers often have methods for marking items that are not covered by the warranty With textiles this is usually a hole punch or something with the tag. With hardware we had the serial number recorded. But consumers don’t care. If they buy something from a vendor they think is selling them something as new and the vendor tells them to go the manufacturer, the customer doesn’t care that you marked it as not eligible for warranty. They just want that coverage We even had customers write ragebait Reddit posts claiming we were unfairly denying warranties, people sending stories to popular newsletters and journalists, and other attempts to make us look bad for not honoring warranties on products they bought through gray market channels.
  - nothrabannosir 9mo ago
    > ... the vendor tells them to go the manufacturer... Maybe this is the problem. Retailers should cover the statutory warranty on any product they sell.
    - eclipticplane 9mo ago
      What do you mean, 'statutory warranty'? At least in the US, aside from a few specific circumstances (door to door sales for example with a '3 day cool off' period) there is no mandatory return policy or timeline.
mixedbit 9mo ago
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?
epistasis 9mo ago
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.
jwr 9mo ago
> 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")
- buckle8017 9mo ago
  The problem is the eBay sellers always label defective stuff as simply new product. People buying it may or may not be ok with the defect. Think bad welds, usually they're fine for a while and then they're very much not.
  - ljf 9mo ago
    Had this recently, bought a dehumidifier for a good price, marked as new - arrived and had obviously been opened and didn't work. Out of a desire to have a dehumidifier sooner than later I was about to open it up when I saw it already had been, so I opened a return instead and sent it back. I can only assume it is worth it for the seller to sell untested goods as new, a good number must work long enough for the buyer to be happy.
    - bombcar 9mo ago
      I still remember Fry's Electronics and trying to find anything that hadn't been opened-returned-reshinkwrapped. Often it was impossible. Not sure why they had so many but eh whatever, it mostly worked fine.
  - acdha 9mo ago
    It’s not hard to mark things as defective, liquidated, etc. so those eBay sellers can face fraud charges. We shouldn’t be sending stuff to landfills just to save a few pennies in permanent marker.
    - 9mo ago
mschuster91 9mo ago
> 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-burn-stock-worth-hundreds-of-millions-each-year https://theweek.com/95179/luxury-brands-including-burberry-b...
yread 9mo ago
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)
- nine_k 9mo ago
  Do high-end brands even produce 300 kilotons of clothing? Assuming, very generously, that a piece of clothing, with packaging and all, weights 1 kg, it would be 300M pieces of clothing; that could be an entire production run of something very ubiquitous (say, Levi's 501), but definitely not high-end.
  - michaelt 9mo ago
    I think that tonnage is for all textiles, not just high-end clothing. https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/publications/the-destruction-of-returned-and-unsold-textiles-in-europes-circular-economy https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/publications/the-destr... says "Based on available studies, an estimated 4-9% of all textile products put on the market in Europe are destroyed before use, amounting to between 264,000 and 594,000 tonnes of textiles destroyed each year."
dylan604 9mo ago
> 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".
sva_ 9mo ago
> 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'.
detritus 9mo ago
> 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?
ragall 9mo ago
> 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...
- stevekemp 9mo ago
  From the site guidelines: Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
protocolture 9mo ago
>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. I used to work in IT Recycling and I feel like I was for some time, this process. We would take stock to be destroyed from refurbishment/replacement pipelines, fix it up "just enough" and if we werent worried about serialisation, it would go out via eBay, otherwise it would be gifted to clients who would say it was for their kids but I had suspicions that sometimes it was going back into retail eventually. I still have a lot of shit that should have been destroyed.
mvdtnz 9mo ago
If the choice is between destroying the product and giving it away you give it away. End of story. Stop trying to make it more complicated than it is.

throwaway198846 9mo ago

They have exceptions for manufacturing defects

morkalork 9mo ago

What became of the relationship with the recycling company?

WalterBright 9mo ago

> 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?

xp84 9mo ago
Probably, but part of the point of outsourcing the recycling was that you wouldn't have to set up infrastructure, process and people for that. If they weren't crooked, you could even have customers ship the products directly to the recycler. To drill it first, then you are paying for shipping twice, on an item that is already worthless to you.
Doohickey-d 9mo ago
This does happen: for example in Macbook repair, it is common to buy defective motherboards, in order to salvage the chips off them (which are apple-specific, hence not purchasable elsewhere). Those boards often come from China, and often have holes drilled in them, I guess exactly to prevent them from being repaired. It's a shame, because some of those boards could (and would, they are valuable enough) be fully repaired by a skilled repair person. Instead, the chips are picked off and the rest goes to waste. I did buy a batch once that didn't have holes drilled, and they all turned out to have all sorts of strange, often random issues, so I suspect those were RMAs that somehow "fell off the back of a truck" and escaped the drilling.
- p1anecrazy 9mo ago
  Why do you think the ones with holes didn‘t have the same defect?
- krackers 9mo ago
  There is this insane video where someone actually does repair one of the prototype boards that have been drilled https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reQq8fx4D0Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reQq8fx4D0Q

dlcarrier 9mo ago

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.

Aurornis 9mo ago
> so many manufacturers often have methods for marking items that are not covered by the warranty With textiles this is usually a hole punch or something with the tag. With hardware we had the serial number recorded. But consumers don’t care. If they buy something from a vendor they think is selling them something as new and the vendor tells them to go the manufacturer, the customer doesn’t care that you marked it as not eligible for warranty. They just want that coverage We even had customers write ragebait Reddit posts claiming we were unfairly denying warranties, people sending stories to popular newsletters and journalists, and other attempts to make us look bad for not honoring warranties on products they bought through gray market channels.
- nothrabannosir 9mo ago
  > ... the vendor tells them to go the manufacturer... Maybe this is the problem. Retailers should cover the statutory warranty on any product they sell.
  - eclipticplane 9mo ago
    What do you mean, 'statutory warranty'? At least in the US, aside from a few specific circumstances (door to door sales for example with a '3 day cool off' period) there is no mandatory return policy or timeline.

mixedbit 9mo ago

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?

epistasis 9mo ago

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.

jwr 9mo ago

> 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")

buckle8017 9mo ago
The problem is the eBay sellers always label defective stuff as simply new product. People buying it may or may not be ok with the defect. Think bad welds, usually they're fine for a while and then they're very much not.
- ljf 9mo ago
  Had this recently, bought a dehumidifier for a good price, marked as new - arrived and had obviously been opened and didn't work. Out of a desire to have a dehumidifier sooner than later I was about to open it up when I saw it already had been, so I opened a return instead and sent it back. I can only assume it is worth it for the seller to sell untested goods as new, a good number must work long enough for the buyer to be happy.
  - bombcar 9mo ago
    I still remember Fry's Electronics and trying to find anything that hadn't been opened-returned-reshinkwrapped. Often it was impossible. Not sure why they had so many but eh whatever, it mostly worked fine.
- acdha 9mo ago
  It’s not hard to mark things as defective, liquidated, etc. so those eBay sellers can face fraud charges. We shouldn’t be sending stuff to landfills just to save a few pennies in permanent marker.
  - 9mo ago

mschuster91 9mo ago

> 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-burn-stock-worth-hundreds-of-millions-each-year https://theweek.com/95179/luxury-brands-including-burberry-b...

yread 9mo ago

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)

nine_k 9mo ago
Do high-end brands even produce 300 kilotons of clothing? Assuming, very generously, that a piece of clothing, with packaging and all, weights 1 kg, it would be 300M pieces of clothing; that could be an entire production run of something very ubiquitous (say, Levi's 501), but definitely not high-end.
- michaelt 9mo ago
  I think that tonnage is for all textiles, not just high-end clothing. https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/publications/the-destruction-of-returned-and-unsold-textiles-in-europes-circular-economy https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/publications/the-destr... says "Based on available studies, an estimated 4-9% of all textile products put on the market in Europe are destroyed before use, amounting to between 264,000 and 594,000 tonnes of textiles destroyed each year."

dylan604 9mo ago

> 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".

sva_ 9mo ago

> 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'.

detritus 9mo ago

> 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?

ragall 9mo ago

> 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...

stevekemp 9mo ago
From the site guidelines: Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".

protocolture 9mo ago

>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. I used to work in IT Recycling and I feel like I was for some time, this process. We would take stock to be destroyed from refurbishment/replacement pipelines, fix it up "just enough" and if we werent worried about serialisation, it would go out via eBay, otherwise it would be gifted to clients who would say it was for their kids but I had suspicions that sometimes it was going back into retail eventually. I still have a lot of shit that should have been destroyed.

mvdtnz 9mo ago

If the choice is between destroying the product and giving it away you give it away. End of story. Stop trying to make it more complicated than it is.