Lost Stock and sustainable fashion

COVID-19 has had devastating effects on the world. During lockdown we realised the situation in Bangladesh was on track to cause a humanitarian crisis. Billions of pounds worth of stock was cancelled, leaving garment workers out of jobs, factories unable to pay their staff and new clothing potentially heading to landfill.

We knew we needed to do something, so we came up with the idea of Lost Stock as a means to help.

Lost Stock is brought to you from the team at Mallzee. Our free shopping app has clothes from over 180 high street brands and popular retailers. We also help retailers make better product choices by collecting consumer opinions on stock prior to it being manufactured. This means retailers can focus on making products that consumers love, reducing the need for discounting and lowering the environmental impact by creating less surplus stock which ends up in landfill. 

We are delighted that Lost Stock is able to support garment workers and their families whilst also helping to reduce the volume of new items heading to landfill in the wake of COVID-19 and stock order cancellations. For every box sold, we support a worker and their family for a week through our partnership with SAJIDA Foundation. So far, we have been able to provide funds to help over 80,000 families, and the number continues to grow. The response we’ve seen from the public highlights how important it is to take action, and we’re so happy that we can contribute to make a difference to both people and environment.

Reducing waste in the industry has always been a priority for us at Mallzee, and it is very much something we had in mind when developing Lost Stock. Our data offering Mallzee Insights enables retailers to test the popularity of potential new products prior to manufacturing them - reducing unwanted items being brought to market. How we can cut down on overstock and reduce high levels of samples are some of the problems we are tackling, with an aim to replace the “hope for the best” approach retail with data-informed decisions. The insights from thousands of consumer opinions in our shopping app powers Mallzee Insights, our data-driven solution for brands and retailers that are looking to improve their offering. 

How Lost Stock is helping

With Lost Stock, we are addressing an immediate problem in the retail industry. Tons of stock was stranded at factories or on the way to the UK, with retailers refusing to pay for the stock they had already ordered. Our solution was to help factories by picking up this stock that they would otherwise likely not be able to get rid of. We are supporting factories in this way, while providing a large proportion of the cost of the boxes directly to our NGO partner SAJIDA Foundation who use the money to support families in need. Some of these families have lost their jobs as a result of stock cancellations or factory closures, others are struggling because of the health implications of Coronavirus. Our collaboration with SAJIDA Foundation means that we can help people directly, as well as supporting the factories in the local areas by buying cancelled stock.

This is an unprecedented situation, and we needed to do something to help, right now. We are looking at longer term solutions to continue to provide sustainable help to regions impacted by COVID-19 and a broken retail system. We don’t have all the answers, but we are asking one of the most important questions: what can we do to help?

If you are a business who wants to partner with us to help, get in touch and let us know what you are working on. If you are a factory faced with stock cancellations, contact buying@loststock.com with your line lists, and we'll be in touch to discuss. Thank you.