Fashion & Apparel
In fashion, the sale isn't a sale until the return window closes.
A style that converts well and comes back at half can be a loss-maker while the dashboard calls it a winner. Returns, broken size runs and season length are commercial facts that decide where the next pound should go.
Why this changes the advertising decision
What is different here isn't the channel. It's the economics underneath it.
Returns land weeks after the click
Revenue is reported at checkout and undone at the warehouse. Contribution has to be measured after returns and refund handling, per style, before any bid decision is credible.
A style is not a SKU
One dress can be dozens of size and colour variants with completely different sell-through. Buying attention for a style whose middle sizes have gone is buying a bounce.
Season length is a deadline
Stock has a date attached. What is worth paying for in week two of a season is not worth the same in week ten, when the same unit is heading for markdown.
Full price and clearance are different businesses
Running both through one target teaches the platform to chase the discount buyer, then reports the resulting revenue as growth.
One product, one decision
The decision looks like this.
Illustrative example. Not a client result.
Wool overcoat, charcoal
- Contribution after returns
- 31%
- Return rate
- High on sizes 8 and 16
- Size availability
- Core sizes sold through
- Weeks of season left
- 3
What changed
Core sizes gone, three weeks of season left.
Paying full-price prices for a coat whose middle sizes have sold out buys returns and bounces. The remaining units are now a cash question, not a growth one.
Nothing here happens automatically. The data flags the change; the job change is a decision we make with you.
What we do about it
The execution follows the economics, not the other way round.
Availability governs eligibility
Styles with broken core size runs come out of the growth budget rather than being bid down slowly while they collect clicks.
Contribution is measured after returns
Return behaviour is read at style and size level from your own returns data, and it sets the ceiling on what a style is worth paying for.
Full price and clearance are separated
Clearance runs on its own budget with a cash objective. Newness runs on its own budget with a margin objective. Neither borrows the other's numbers.
Season windows are planned, not reacted to
Budget moves with your own buying and markdown calendar, which you already know weeks ahead, rather than with last week's performance report.
Evidence
£4.35m
ClosureLDN
Google Ads attributed revenue on £415k spend, a reported 10.48× ROAS across all Google Ads channels.
A fashion catalogue where returns, broken size runs and cash recovery changed which products deserved budget. The Shopping routing sits inside the account-wide figure, not on top of it.
- Challenge
- High-return lines overstated what the business kept, key sizes sold through on in-stock styles, and some stock had a cash-recovery job.
- What we changed
- Within wider account management, 591 SKUs routed into four Shopping groups (High Returns, Cash Flow, New Customer, Broken Sizes), each bid for its own job.
- Period
- UK, 1 March–31 August 2026 (six months).
- Basis
- Conversion-time attributed revenue and total spend, reported and rounded. Not an incremental-sales or profit measure.
- Source
- Closure London quarterly business review, prepared 16 September 2026.
The Method - BOI®
How BOI® applies here.
The problem
Hero seasonal pieces, evergreen basics and end-of-line clearance cannot share a ROAS target.
The BOI® answer
Hero drops run as Scale. Basics run as Profit. Broken-size clearance runs as Recovery. Each SKU holds one job at a time, and the job only changes when someone decides it should.
Next step
We'll tell you what your account is doing to your fashion & apparel margin.
A commercial review reads your account against your own product economics, and tells you where the next pound should go. Brands we work with typically spend around £10k a month on Google Ads, but that is guidance, not a gate. If you are below it and the question is real, ask anyway.
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