Every September, autumn-winter collections arrive in stores while it is still 20 to 25 degrees outside. By the time the cold comes, the sales have already started. It looks like poor planning, but the real problem is a fashion calendar that is almost impossible to move. Here is why, and what brands are doing about it.
How climate change is breaking the fashion calendar
Anyone who has worked in a clothing store knows what September looks like now. The first autumn-winter deliveries arrive at the start of the month. Coats, wool jumpers and boots go out on the floor, and then they wait. Customers come in wearing T-shirts, look at the knitwear and leave with another summer dress, because nobody buys warm clothing when it is still 20 to 25 degrees outside. By the time the cold actually comes, it is already time for the autumn sales. A large part of the collection ends up being sold at a reduced price.
Sounds like a management mistake, right?
On the surface, it does. Someone ordered too many coats, and someone delivered them too early. But the real problem is a schedule that is extremely hard to move. Changing it is like trying to stop a container ship in the middle of the sea: the inertia is simply too strong.
Look at the options a retailer actually has. You cannot leave your store with empty shelves after summer and wait for the cold to arrive. You cannot easily rewrite a production plan agreed with suppliers and manufacturers many months earlier. And you cannot decide when your competitors start discounting. If the store across the street cuts prices in October, your customers will expect the same, even if your coats never had a fair chance at full price.
On top of that, the seasons now change so abruptly that the demi-season range is losing its purpose. Light jackets and trench coats used to have several comfortable weeks of autumn. Now the weather can jump from summer heat to proper cold almost overnight, and the in-between pieces miss their moment entirely. Seen this way, the whole autumn-winter collection looks doomed before it even arrives.
The numbers behind the feeling
This is more than a shop-floor impression. In September 2023, H&M expected its monthly sales to fall 10% in local currencies. The company linked the drop to unusually hot weather in several European markets. Its then chief executive Helena Helmersson told Reuters that shoppers were putting off heavy autumn purchases. That same week, Pepco reported that its autumn-winter stock had landed during record warm weather in its Central and Eastern European markets.
The pattern is not limited to Europe. In South Korea, warm weather that lasted through November 2024 hurt outerwear sales. Samsung C&T Fashion Group’s fourth-quarter operating profit fell 6.5% year on year. And this year the problem reached the runway: temperatures in Paris hit 28 degrees during Fashion Week, and many guests chose sleeveless tops over the autumn collections that had just arrived in stores.
The cost goes beyond unsold stock. Outerwear usually carries higher margins than most of the range, and a late winter risks more shoppers holding out for Black Friday at the end of November before buying a coat. Each warm week leaves more stock on the rails, and that stock eventually has to go at a lower price. The autumn sale is often less a choice than the bill for the weather.
What the industry is trying
None of these approaches stops the container ship. But some of them change where it is heading, and a few of them deal directly with the three traps described above.
Taking the discount race out of individual hands. Of the three traps, the competitor problem is the hardest to solve alone, because no single brand can afford to hold full prices while everyone else cuts. In 2020, a group led by Dries Van Noten tried to solve it collectively. Their open letter, signed by brands and retailers including Acne Studios, Selfridges, Nordstrom and Mytheresa, proposed treating August to January as the full-price autumn-winter season and February to July as spring-summer. Discounts would wait until January and July. Van Noten’s frustration was the same as that of any store manager: a collection designed over months reaching the shop floor only about six weeks before being cut by half. Voluntary pledges are fragile, though, which is why some people look at regulation instead. In Australia, industry figures pushing for later delivery dates pointed to France, where sales periods are strictly controlled by law. When every retailer must wait for the same official start date, holding prices a little longer no longer puts you at a disadvantage.
Making the demi-season the main act. If the in-between weeks are where collections fail, one answer is to stop treating them as a short bridge and design most of the range for them. Mango’s chief executive Toni Ruiz described this in a 2024 interview: the industry now has to plan for periods that mix hot and cold days, with pieces such as light trench coats for women and breathable performance fabrics for men. Pau Almar, a consultant who spent ten years at Zara, said this October that retailers will need to sell fewer heavy coats and more transitional layers. In Korea, Kolon Sport expanded its lightweight outerwear so it stretches from mid-season into early winter. For a store, this means the September delivery is no longer a bet on cold weather arriving on time.
Changing what arrives in September. The empty-shelves problem does not have to be solved with winter stock. In 2023, the UK online retailer Freemans responded to unpredictable weather with a concept built around transitional collections and layered outfits for the following two months, instead of moving straight into autumn-winter. The shop floor stays full, but with clothes people will actually wear in the weather outside the door.
Shortening the distance between factory and shelf. Long lead times are a big part of the inertia, so moving some production closer helps. Mango now sources trend-driven pieces from European manufacturers and keeps basic, functional items with suppliers in Asia. The shift is still partial: about 40% of its suppliers are in Europe, but more than 80% of volumes are still made in Asia. Even so, a nearby supplier for part of the range lets a brand wait longer before committing, and in Korea, industry voices say quick, flexible production matters most for slow-to-make items like padded jackets.
Letting weather data guide price and stock. Weather analytics firms now measure how much a product’s sales depend on temperature. According to Planalytics, one of these firms, knowing when, where and how strongly the weather will change demand lets a retailer postpone markdowns or make them smaller when conditions are favourable. Because cold weather rarely arrives everywhere at once, the same data can be used to send coats to the regions where it is actually getting cold, rather than discounting them across the whole chain.
Steering, not stopping
Every one of these options has a cost. Nearshoring raises prices per piece, transitional ranges need new design thinking, and a shared discount calendar needs either cooperation between rivals or a law that forces it. But the alternative is to keep buying collections for an autumn that no longer arrives on time and then sell them at a loss. The ship cannot stop mid-sea, but it can be turned. Brands that start turning now will be in a better position when the next warm September comes, and the last few years suggest it will.