Sustainability, Vol. 15, Pages 15517: Possibilities of Sale Forecasting Textile Products with a Short Life Cycle

Sustainability, Vol. 15, Pages 15517: Possibilities of Sale Forecasting Textile Products with a Short Life Cycle

Sustainability doi: 10.3390/su152115517

Authors: Peter Kačmáry Norbert Lörinc

Almost 115 million tons of fibers comprising almost 90 million tons of chemical fibers were produced in the world in 2021, which are mainly used for the production of clothing and footwear. A total of 30% of textile and apparel products are never sold, which means extreme waste production. This article points out possibilities of forecasting the sales of clothing in the case of one relatively large online store. Inadequate stocks of textile products in the company lead to losses and overstock leads to the need to sell products at a discount, which is undesirable and not sustainable for the company. Therefore, the aim of this research is to design a forecasting system based on classical methods (with emphasis on seasonality) and its verification in practice. The results were verified directly with the real sale or with results from a model based on a neural network. The problem with textile products is that they have a short life cycle, i.e., the length of the life cycle is approximately half a year, and a high seasonality is also presented. Therefore, the seasonal indices and Holt–Winters methods (multiplication and additional approaches) were used for forecasting products. Ultimately, this model could contribute to reducing the loss of unsold goods and thus reduce the waste of resources and increase the use of goods in other similar companies.