Memo Period — The Window in Which Consigned Goods Must Sell or Return
Memo Period — The Window in Which Consigned Goods Must Sell or Return
The agreed term — typically days for domestic sale, weeks for international — that defines a memo's clock
The memo period is the agreed window of time during which a buyer or retailer may examine, show, or attempt to sell consigned goods before the consignment must be closed by either remittance of payment or return of the goods. Memo periods are negotiated case by case, with typical domestic terms running from three to seven days for short-term examination memos and thirty to sixty or ninety days for full retail consignments. International shipments and high-value parcels often carry longer terms — fourteen to thirty days or more — to accommodate the practical realities of trans-border movement and customs processing.
What the period covers
The memo period begins when the goods are received and documented by the recipient and ends on the negotiated deadline. During the period, the recipient is responsible for the goods — for insurance, for security, and for either selling and remitting payment or returning the unsold items. The period is a practical accommodation of the time required to show goods to clients, conclude sales, and process returns; it is not a credit period or a discretionary extension.
Different types of memo carry different typical periods. A short-term examination memo — sent so a dealer can study a stone, take photographs, or show it to a single client — may run only three to five days. A retail consignment memo — sent to a store for display and potential sale — typically runs thirty to ninety days. A wholesale-to-wholesale memo for parcel evaluation may run a similar period. International memos add days for shipping, customs, and currency handling, with corresponding extensions to the agreed term.
Extensions and renegotiation
The memo period is a contractual term and can be extended only by agreement. A recipient who needs additional time should contact the consigning dealer before the deadline expires to request an extension, with the new terms documented in writing. Extensions are routinely granted for legitimate business reasons — a near-closed sale, a client travel delay, a customs hold — but are not assumed.
Failure to return goods or remit payment by the deadline without an agreed extension constitutes a breach of the memo. The consequences include conversion of the memo into a forced sale at the consigned prices (the recipient must now pay for goods they intended to return), interest and penalty charges, and potential damage to the recipient's standing in the trade. Repeated breaches result in blacklisting from the network of dealers who maintain memo flow, which can be commercially fatal for a retailer or dealer dependent on consignment access.
Trade-network discipline
The memo system functions because the trade as a whole maintains discipline around memo periods. Dealers exchange information about reliable and unreliable counterparties; serious breaches become known across the network within days; and the social cost of breaking memo discipline is severe enough that even substantial firms are reluctant to risk it. The discipline is informal but powerful, and is the foundation that allows the trade to extend hundreds of millions of dollars of consignment without formal credit arrangements or collateral.