It's no secret that I love getting a bargain. But I'm rather flippant when it comes to sales. If the stores nice and calm and I have plenty of time I will thoroughly enjoy myself, but busy shops with long queues just drive me mad. It's also very easy to buy a load of crap during sales too and waste a lot of money.
From working in retail for about 4 years I think I've learnt some good tricks on how to get a bargain and more importantly the most from sales. So I've listed below my top 5 tricks and tips to get the most out of this sales period.
1. Don't go shopping on a Saturday
Just don't do it. Even if it seems like a nice way to spend your Saturday, it's not. EVERYONE goes out on a Saturday. More people = more mess. More mess= less staff able to help. Less staff= Longer queues. You get my drift. Sunday's are a much nicer day to go shopping, obviously week days are the best but most of us are at work then. Late night shopping when it's not the Christmas period is also a lovely time to go. Stores are emptier, the stock is where it should be and queue time is minimal.
2. Know when sales start
A bit of planning in advance never hurt anyone. From working in retail I generally got the hang of when other sales started. For most shops this will be the first week of July. But this obviously varies per shop. If you can bare to have an overly active email inbox make sure you subscribe to the newsletters of your favourite shops, some of them you can select what promotions you'd like to recieve so you can just be notified of sales. If you tend to shop at slightly higher end places be really friendly to a shop assistant and try build a relationship with them- seriously, they are your key to discounts and early sale access especially if they work on commission,
3. You can wait for that beloved Leopard print jumper.
I adore animal prints, whether that's snake, leopard, lizard- if it immitates something that moved I'm all over that. However, the pieces are a little marmitey. As a general rule of thumb, I found that all our leopard print and snake print items where always the last to sell in the sale, I've noticed this in many shops. You can generally hold out for these items until the end of the sale when there are final reductions.
4. Do not compromise on size
How many ill fitting pieces of clothing do you have in your wardrobe? And how many of those did you get in the sales? The discounts can often make us feel like something is too good to miss and we tend to compromise on this. When this happens there are two things you can do instead, 1. Ask the assistant if the size you want is available elsewhere in the company. This is obviously dependant on where you shop, and generally applies to shops slightly higher end. 2. Just leave the thing. There are so many shops and so many products I'm sure they'll be another shoe you like just as much elsewhere which won't give you blisters every time you step out in them.
5. Buy for the product, not the price.
I've saved the most common error till last. Buying for the sake of it. Similar to the sizing point. Just ask yourself would you ever consider this item full price? A great technique I've learnt is to save things to a wishlist online and then wait for them to go into sale, so I'm just buying things I like- but the discount is a bonus rather than a reason for buying.
What are your handy sale tips and have you picked up anything nice? X
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| Jacket: Zara Shirt: H&M Jeans: Zara Shoes: Topshop |
Just don't do it. Even if it seems like a nice way to spend your Saturday, it's not. EVERYONE goes out on a Saturday. More people = more mess. More mess= less staff able to help. Less staff= Longer queues. You get my drift. Sunday's are a much nicer day to go shopping, obviously week days are the best but most of us are at work then. Late night shopping when it's not the Christmas period is also a lovely time to go. Stores are emptier, the stock is where it should be and queue time is minimal.
2. Know when sales start
A bit of planning in advance never hurt anyone. From working in retail I generally got the hang of when other sales started. For most shops this will be the first week of July. But this obviously varies per shop. If you can bare to have an overly active email inbox make sure you subscribe to the newsletters of your favourite shops, some of them you can select what promotions you'd like to recieve so you can just be notified of sales. If you tend to shop at slightly higher end places be really friendly to a shop assistant and try build a relationship with them- seriously, they are your key to discounts and early sale access especially if they work on commission,
3. You can wait for that beloved Leopard print jumper.
I adore animal prints, whether that's snake, leopard, lizard- if it immitates something that moved I'm all over that. However, the pieces are a little marmitey. As a general rule of thumb, I found that all our leopard print and snake print items where always the last to sell in the sale, I've noticed this in many shops. You can generally hold out for these items until the end of the sale when there are final reductions.
4. Do not compromise on size
How many ill fitting pieces of clothing do you have in your wardrobe? And how many of those did you get in the sales? The discounts can often make us feel like something is too good to miss and we tend to compromise on this. When this happens there are two things you can do instead, 1. Ask the assistant if the size you want is available elsewhere in the company. This is obviously dependant on where you shop, and generally applies to shops slightly higher end. 2. Just leave the thing. There are so many shops and so many products I'm sure they'll be another shoe you like just as much elsewhere which won't give you blisters every time you step out in them.
5. Buy for the product, not the price.
I've saved the most common error till last. Buying for the sake of it. Similar to the sizing point. Just ask yourself would you ever consider this item full price? A great technique I've learnt is to save things to a wishlist online and then wait for them to go into sale, so I'm just buying things I like- but the discount is a bonus rather than a reason for buying.
What are your handy sale tips and have you picked up anything nice? X
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