What to do with dead stock instead of discounting it to zero

TL;DR: Discounting dead stock to zero often loses money once fulfilment and storage are included. Selling the lot to a bulk buyer can net more cash, stop storage costs, and keep the markdown off your own store.

Last updated: November 2026

Every store ends up with dead stock: a shelf of stuff that won’t sell. A colourway nobody wanted, a size run too deep, the 400 units you ordered because the MOQ was 500, often before you had really vetted the supplier or the terms behind that deposit.

Why discounting to zero is usually the worst option

The default move is to keep discounting it — 20% off, then 40%, then a 70% “clearance”. That’s usually the worst option, and here’s why with numbers.

Overstock isn’t free just because you already paid for it. It keeps costing you storage (per pallet or bin, every month), cash (money that can’t buy products that do sell), and attention. Carrying inventory typically costs around 20 to 30% of its value per year.

Say you have 300 units that cost €8 each and sell for €30. Run them at 70% off (€9): on paper €1 above cost. But pick-and-pack, packaging, shipping, and fees on a €9 order can be €5 to €7. You’re now losing money on every sale, 300 times, each a separate parcel. And customers learn to wait for the next sale.

Sell the lot to another business

The alternative is to sell the whole lot to another business — off-price retailers, market traders, discount shops, resellers. A bulk buyer offers €6 a unit for all 300: you get €1,800 in one transaction, ship one or two pallets instead of 300 parcels, stop the storage cost, and your own customers never see it marked down.

€6 is below your €8 cost, but the €8 is sunk either way. The real question is which option nets the most cash after fulfilment and storage.

How to price a bulk lot

To price a bulk lot, know your floor first. Price per unit but sell by lot with tiers, be honest about condition and packaging, include photos, carton count and weight so buyers can quote freight, and move early, because seasonal stock loses value fast.

Put the stock in front of volume buyers

Finding buyers was always the hard part. That gap is why I started ForthClear, a B2B marketplace for Shopify merchants to sell surplus stock to bulk buyers.

Listing is free, there’s a 5% fee only when something sells, and buyers don’t pay a fee. Whatever you use, put the stock in front of people who buy in volume.

A quick test

A useful quick test is to sort your inventory by days since last sale. For anything over 90 days, write down units on hand, monthly storage cost, and what you’d net per unit on a clearance after fulfilment.

If that last number is near zero or negative, a bulk sale is almost certainly the better move. The cleaner fix, next time, is not to buy as much: forecast demand from your Shopify order history before you raise the PO. Some of what looks like overstock is also returns that never should have gone back on the shelf; that cost starts in what a Shopify return actually costs. And dead stock is one stage on an ecommerce operations map, which is the better place to decide whether the real problem is liquidation or purchasing.