There is little or no waste from unsold products.

The company said that its revenues declined because it had been forced to make price concessions and issue refunds on unsold products returned by retailers.

Some retailers and wholesalers have slowed new orders or held up payments for unsold products with painful results.

Move too aggressively or awkwardly and a company could be saddled with unsold products or a reputation for opportunism.

Business inventories jumped 0.8 percent in December, reflecting a backlog of unsold products, the Commerce Department said.

The parting was amicable, and the label returned her musical rights, as well as all unsold product.

Smashbox was forced to take back unsold products and replace them with the new season's offerings, or stop selling altogether.

But in the last few weeks competitiveness has spiked, perhaps because of an attempt by online merchants to clear out inventories of unsold products.

Any sudden plunge into recession will typically leave manufacturers with unsold products in the warehouse.

Manufacturing tends to be more sensitive to economic trends than services, economists say, especially now that companies do not build up big inventories of unsold products.