Footwear
A footwear range is only as sellable as its middle sizes.
Fit drives returns, and the size curve sells through unevenly by design. Once the middle of the curve has gone, the same advertising spend buys a worse outcome on the same product.
Why this changes the advertising decision
What is different here isn't the channel. It's the economics underneath it.
Fit uncertainty sets the return rate
Return rates in footwear are a property of the product and the buyer, not a fixed percentage you can apply across the catalogue.
The size curve empties from the middle
Demand concentrates on common sizes. What remains is the tail, which converts worse and returns more, on the same product page.
Replenishment lead times are long
If a size is not coming back this season, spend on that line is a clearance decision, not a growth one.
One product, one decision
The decision looks like this.
Illustrative example. Not a client result.
Leather trainer, white
- Contribution after returns
- 26%
- Return rate
- Elevated in the size tail
- Size availability
- Tail only
- Replenishment
- Not this season
What changed
Middle of the curve sold out, no replenishment.
The listing still converts, so the platform keeps buying it. What it is buying now is the return-heavy end of the curve.
Nothing here happens automatically. The data flags the change; the job change is a decision we make with you.
What we do about it
The execution follows the economics, not the other way round.
Bidding follows the size curve
Availability at size level decides whether a line stays in the growth budget, rather than the style's averaged performance.
Return rate is read per line, not per catalogue
We use your returns data to set what each line is worth, instead of applying one blended allowance to everything.
End-of-curve stock gets a cash objective
When replenishment is not coming, the objective changes to releasing cash within a contribution floor and a time box.
Evidence
£520k+
UK Soccer Shop
Gross cash recovered from ageing stock across a 45-day recovery programme.
Sportswear including footwear, where the size tail aged and the commercial question moved from growth to cash recovery.
- Challenge
- Aged stock past 90 days was being bought at full-margin targets when its real commercial job was cash recovery.
- What we changed
- SKUs mapped by stock age, margin and competitive pressure, segmented with custom labels and moved to cash-recovery rules.
- Period
- A 45-day aged-stock recovery programme, against the preceding equivalent period.
- Basis
- Cash released from ageing stock, not contribution, not profit and not ad spend saved. Turnover measured on the client's own inventory reporting.
- Source
- Client-reported from their finance data.
The Method - BOI®
How BOI® applies here.
The problem
Returns economics destroy any blended ROAS in footwear, because size-led return rates rewrite contribution line by line.
The BOI® answer
Low-return styles run as Scale. High-return styles run as Profit with tighter caps. End-of-curve stock runs as Recovery.
Next step
We'll tell you what your account is doing to your footwear margin.
A commercial review reads your account against your own product economics, and tells you where the next pound should go. Brands we work with typically spend around £10k a month on Google Ads, but that is guidance, not a gate. If you are below it and the question is real, ask anyway.
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