Steve,
A young man called Michael Dell once told me how he was selling computers from his bedroom to his schoolmates, and decided he wanted to
incorporate, but had no money. And I asked him "what did you do"? And he said "I sold some inventory". I asked what that meant and he explained he put what he had lying around his home on special sale. Actually, his company did pretty well.
Anyway, yes, since then when I see a "sale" I think "somebody wants to clear inventory in a hurry".
Incidentally, I met a few other youngish guys who had larger companies, eg making beige personal computers or business software, but apart from one of them who started out with printer rasterisers and branched out into graphics software, most of those who survived were pretty unpleasant individuals while Michael was, at least at that time a nice guy.
Edmund