What are dead-on-arrival styles and how do I identify them before market?

DOA styles cost you money twice — once when you buy them and again when you mark them down. Identifying them before market stops you from repeating the same mistake with a different vendor's version of the same look.

To find them, sort your sales export by quantity sold from lowest to highest and filter for styles that have been active in your store for at least 30 days. The bottom five are your DOA list. But the list alone isn't enough. Next to each style, write one sentence explaining why it failed: wrong price point, wrong fabric for your climate, poor trend timing, or sizing issues.

That sentence is what transforms a painful record into a pattern-recognition tool. At market, when a vendor pitches you something with those same attributes — say, a heavy knit in a warm-climate store — you'll have specific language to say no instead of just a vague feeling. One boutique owner described the realization by saying it was so obvious she had been buying the same bad trends over and over once she saw them listed out.