Clearance works better when the floor is explicit.
Move aging inventory with controlled customer offers that protect margin floors and avoid broad discounts across healthy products.
Markdown
Cuts price everywhere and trains customers to wait.
Floor-based offer
Lets shoppers negotiate only where inventory needs velocity.
Business goal
inventory velocity
Primary metric
gross margin
Tool type
calculator
Clearance playbook
Move discontinued inventory to a clearance category, leave the selling price intact, and let customers make an offer while you control the floor.
Broad markdowns discount items that could have sold at full price, teach repeat customers to wait, and signal that your listed prices were never real.
Set the rules once and let Vector route each offer into one of three decision zones.
Auto accept
Offer stays inside the safe margin floor.
Counter zone
Offer is not dead, but it needs a margin-safe counter.
Decline
Offer is below your true economics and should not move forward.
Price Builder makes COGS, shipping, fees, profit markup, and market-adjust buffers explicit so an accepted discount does not accidentally consume core margin.
Clearance counters should move the shopper from a single-unit, deep-discount mindset toward higher transaction value.
Trade a better unit price for more units cleared.
Recommend companion items that raise AOV while improving inventory velocity.
At a $90 ASP and $38 cost basis, a 24.7% average accepted CGO discount nearly doubles gross profit compared with a 40% blanket markdown across 500 units.
Create a clearance collection that excludes healthy products.
Set product-level cost stacks in Price Builder.
Define auto-accept, counter, and decline bands before traffic starts.
Write counter copy that explains quantity or bundle logic.
Review velocity and floor performance at least weekly.
Failure mode
Limit programs to inventory that actually needs movement.
Failure mode
Include shipping, fees, and handling before accepting offers.
Failure mode
Single-unit counters miss the chance to increase AOV while clearing stock.
Primary metric
Inventory health
Cash recovery
Data model
Each playbook has a consistent structure: business goal, primary metric, tool type, collected inputs, workflow, and measurable outputs.
Aging stock, seasonal urgency, and sell-through targets.
COGS, fulfillment costs, fees, and minimum acceptable margin.
Acceptance ranges by SKU, collection, or clearance program.
Workflow
Separate products that need movement from products that should hold price.
Use product economics to define what can be accepted automatically.
Reduce aggressiveness as inventory risk falls or margin pressure rises.
Outputs
Gross margin
Inventory velocity
Recovered cash
