Dead stock is not a moral failing; it is a date on a shelf
A silent bay has a last-sale date. Naming that date, and the lari tied up, is more useful than calling the owner stubborn — even when the brass elbows stay.
I used to keep purchase books for grocers in Adjara. Every back room had a shelf that the family would not discuss: a flavour that a cousin liked, a size that “might sell in the mountains,” a carton taken as a favour to a vendor. Calling it dead stock in a loud voice never moved it. Writing the last-sale date next to the holding cost sometimes did.
How we mark it
In a slow-mover review we agree a window — often nine months for groceries, longer for hardware, shorter for anything with a best-before. SKUs with no movement in that window go on a list with four possible notes: markdown, ask for a return, donate, or hold until the next count. Hold is allowed. It is not the same as pretending the bay is working.
Seasonal goods are not dead
Citrus packing in winter and tourist water in August are not dead in April. A Batumi shop that markdowns beach goods in November is doing inventory planning; a shop that markdowns them in June is giving the season away. We separate the calendar from the silence.
The sentence we will not print
We will not write that the owner is “resisting change.” We will write that the brass elbows have not sold since the last renovation boom and that they occupy 1.4 palettes at a stated value. Sopho on Paliasashvili read that sentence, kept the elbows, and still paid the fee. That is a legitimate ending. The picture did its job; the shelf is her shop.