Fashion app start-up Mallzee has launched a mystery clothing box service, Lost Stock, selling well-known fashion brands to help tackle the issue of cancelled stock and its impact on Bangladeshi workers.

Each box contains spring/summer 2020 items that were rumoured to be destined for high street stores including Topshop and Gap, sold at half their retail price and delivered straight from the suppliers.

Lost Stock boxes cost £35 for over £70 worth of clothing and take 4-6 weeks to arrive. Customers can specify their size and tastes in terms of fit, colour and patterns so the box is more tailored to their style.

Edinburgh-based Mallzee, in partnership with the Sajida Foundation, will donate the profit from each box towards feeding a garment worker and their family for one week. 

Lost Stock is the brainchild of Mallzee owners Cally Russell and Callum Stuart. Russell said: “With no safety net available for some of the poorest workers in the fashion supply chain, we couldn’t sit back and do nothing – leaving families to starve and new clothing heading to landfill.

“Through Mallzee we have a relationship with over 1.5 million UK shoppers, so we have come up with a way to enable them to save lives as they shop. After using all our connections to speak to the Bangladeshi factories we now have access to £20m worth of the clothes.”

British retailers have cancelled an estimated £2.5bn worth of stock from Bangladeshi suppliers, leaving over 135,000 tonnes of clothing destined for landfill, putting a big strain on the fashion supply chain.

In Bangladesh, the garment industry accounts for 84% of the country’s exports, with 2.28 million workers badly affected by the impact of Covid-19 pandemic. 

Lost Stock has so far sold over 15,000 boxes and aims to help more than 50,000 workers by the end of the year.