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Season Wrap: What to Do With Leftover Kit
THE BOX UNDER THE CLUBHOUSE
Every club has one. Odd sizes, last year's design, a colourway somebody insisted on, twelve pairs in XS.
It represents money the club already spent, and it's sitting there depreciating. Here's what to actually do with it, and then how to not have this problem next September.
FIRST: COUNT IT PROPERLY
Twenty minutes, once, and it makes every decision below easier.
Sort into three piles:
Pile 1 — Current design, good condition. Still sellable at or near full price. Pile 2 — Old design, or odd sizes. Sellable at a discount, or useful. Pile 3 — Damaged, mismatched, unsellable. Be honest here.
Write down what's in each pile by size. You'll need those numbers when you plan next year's order.
OPTIONS FOR PILE 1
Sell it at presentation night. Single best sales opportunity of the year. Everyone's there, everyone's feeling sentimental, and parents have their wallets out.
Registration day next season. People buying kit anyway. Bundle it — sock plus registration, or two pairs at a discount.
Keep it as replacement stock. A small buffer of current-design socks is genuinely useful for new players mid-season and for the kid who loses one.
Sell online through your club store, if you have one.
OPTIONS FOR PILE 2
The odd sizes and superseded designs. This is where clubs get stuck.
✅ Discount hard and clear it. Half price at presentation night moves almost anything. Money in the club account beats socks in a box.
✅ Bundle it with something. Free pair with a new hoodie, or with next season's registration. Costs you nothing you haven't already spent.
✅ Give it to the juniors. Bottom age groups often don't have full kit. Free socks to the under-8s buys enormous goodwill with parents.
✅ Use it for trials and come-and-try days. New players get something, and they're wearing your brand before they've registered.
✅ Make it the training set. Old design becomes training kit, new design becomes match kit. This is what most well-organised clubs do by default.
OPTIONS FOR PILE 3
Genuinely unsellable stock.
Donate it. Local shelters, outreach programs and welfare services take new socks — socks are one of the most requested and least donated items. New, unworn socks in odd sizes are genuinely useful to somebody.
Textile recycling for anything damaged. Most councils have a program.
Rag them for the equipment shed. Not glamorous, but better than landfill.
Whatever you do, don't move the box to a different cupboard and repeat this next year.
THE REAL FIX: WHY IT HAPPENED
Leftover kit is almost always one of four things.
| Cause | Fix for next year |
|---|---|
| Guessed the size split | Collect real numbers at registration |
| Ordered too many colourways | One design. Maybe two. Not four. |
| Over-ordered "just in case" | Squad + 15%, not squad + 50% |
| Changed design too often | Keep a design for 2–3 seasons |
That last one is worth dwelling on. Clubs that redesign every year end up with a box every year, because last season's stock is instantly obsolete. Clubs that keep a design for two or three seasons can carry stock forward, top up in small quantities, and never have this problem.
A design refresh every third year, with the same core sock in between, is the pattern that works.
THE PRE-SALE ALTERNATIVE
If leftover stock is a recurring problem, stop carrying stock at all.
Run a pre-sale: collect orders and payment first, produce exactly what's sold. No upfront cost, no leftovers, no box. It requires a bit more organisation up front and it removes the problem entirely.
We've written a full guide to running one.
WRITE IT DOWN NOW
Whatever you decide, do the one thing that helps most: write down the actual size split your club used this year.
Not what you ordered. What people actually took. That single piece of paper is worth more than any estimate you'll make in January, and it's the difference between a clean order next year and another box.
PLANNING NEXT SEASON?
Send us this season's order and what you've got left over. We'll help you size the next one properly — and if the answer is a smaller order than last time, we'll tell you that.
Talk to us about next season →
Free designs, free revisions, and a pre-production sample before full production. Free shipping from 30 pairs.