Markdowns are one of those retail realities that everyone understands… until they hit your P&L in a way that doesn’t make sense. At the retailer level, markdown pressure is massive. Coresight estimates markdowns cost U.S. non-grocery retailers about $300B in revenue in 2018 (~12% of sales) , and attributes 53% of unplanned markdown costs  to inventory misjudgments. That matters for suppliers because when retailers are fighting inventory and margin, they lean harder on mechani