Trousers & Cotton Pants

Three trouser cuts, three customers

The trouser rail carries three genuinely different customers and it pays to stock for all of them. Formal trousers serve the banking and government shelf, where the dress code is unambiguous and a customer replaces rather than experiments. Chino-style cotton pants cover the smart-casual middle, which is the largest and steadiest group. Cargos with utility pockets serve the younger, street-leaning shelf.

Colours stay deliberately close to the wearable core, greys, blacks, navies and earth tones, because trousers are bought to go with things a customer already owns. That makes them a low-risk line to hold: the stock does not date the way a printed tee can.

Sizing follows the same waist range as the denim, so a shop carrying C-15 jeans can order trousers against a size profile it has already proven. For the customer who cannot tell which cut his office expects, Nepal office dress codes and smart casual decoded answer it in plain terms.

Trousers reorder on a slower, steadier rhythm than denim or tees, which makes them useful ballast on an order. A shop that keeps the formal and chino cuts continuously stocked, and treats cargos as the seasonal variable, tends to carry less dead stock across the year. Pair the rail with the polo line and you cover the full smart-casual outfit from one counter, which is the single most common request we get from shops selling into office customers.