The Markdown & Clearance Field Guide

What's inside

This field guide is a working method for merchandising and pricing teams who own end-of-season margin. It treats markdown the way Solya does — as a recurring decision made on rate-of-sale and weeks-of-cover, not on the calendar.

• The three questions — when to mark down, how deep, and where, answered in order from your real sell-through rather than a blanket date.
• The markdown ladder — a weeks-of-cover band table mapping overhang to a recommended first depth, so the opening cut is the shallowest the situation justifies.
• Transfers before markdown — how to recover full-price margin by moving stuck units to stores still selling, and mark down only the true residual.
• Guardrails and automation — margin floors, brand and channel rules, and the ladder from propose-and-approve to guardrailed auto-execution.
• A worked example and an end-of-season checklist — one style traced through the season, plus a list you can run as each season winds down.

Who it's for

Heads of merchandising and pricing, buyers, and retail operations leaders who own markdown and clearance margin — and the analytics teams who support the thresholds behind it.

Why it matters

A markdown taken a week early and a few points shallower recovers margin a late, deep cut never can. The bottleneck is not knowing a style is slow — it's the latency between knowing and acting. This guide is about closing that gap: earlier, narrower, better-placed markdowns, each one a traceable decision with a clear audit trail.