Stuff warming the shelves is just money getting lost on a daily basis. You want your inventory turnover to be as high as possible so you can use the profits to invest it in more profit making activity. It's why Apple is Apple and Sears is Sears.
As a very easy example, what would happened if you opened a lemonade stand, and only managed to sell one glass of lemonade every 193 days? You would still have to buy lemons, and they would go bad. Sears has the same problem. Clothing goes of style. Products are discontinued. Stuff starts to smell bad. That's why stores have Gateway computers, Blackberries, iPhone 4 cases, and iPad 2s incoming right now. There's tons of obsolete stock sometimes decades old that was never sold, taking up warehouse space that can't be sold or leased, but is now used to stock shelves because vendor relationships have been severed forever. And inventory sitting in stock is money locked up in product that can't be used to invest, taking up space that can't be utilized on profitable activities by people doing profitable things.
The sad truth, but a great post. @WiVc1XE-yvj said it right