The Retail Game: Learn to Shop Smarter

Your shopping game is sucks. It’s not your fault it’s all you’ve known, and today I want to do what I can to help you fix it. I’m sure many of you fall in the 90% of men that are functional shoppers, you need it, so you buy it and that just it’s always been. Hopefully, I’ll be able to increase the 10% of strategic shoppers to a higher number. 

Having worked in fashion retail for the better part of 10 years I know I’m the right person to guide you to smarter shopping choices and making sure you get the best bang for your buck. The first thing you need to remember is that much like Fashion Week, retailers release product months ahead of the season. 

The first thing I think you need to know is there are two peak times of the year to do your bulk shopping. 

January 

Immediately after the holiday season is over retailers have a MASSIVE sale on most of their Winter and remaining Fall pieces, we call this January White Sales. White Sales is when retailers attempt to encourage customers to continue shopping since traffic in stores usually dies down after the holidays, retailers try to offer discounts to rev up their sales. Basically, this is a last-ditch effort to sell as much product as they can before they must box up whatever is left to be sent out to the outlet stores or the company warehouses. I have often found that the white sales have better deals then the ones during boxing week. I usually recommend these sales if you are looking to get some additional pieces to layer, or to add to your wardrobe for the season.

June 

Have you ever noticed that in June stores will have a Customer Appreciation, Mid-Season or Employee Pricing sales?  These sales are done in the same vein as the January White Sales for the Spring and Summer products.

A perfect example of these to specific sales tactics can be seen at Zara. Zara is a fast fashion company that rarely has sales, but when they do it’s usually on in January and June. Because Zara launches over 12,000 designs every year there’s no need to have a sales section. Once an item has sold out, they just move on to the next item, so their sales are literally selling off whatever product is left over which is why damn near everything, but the tables are being marked down.

End Of Season Sales

The End of the season is always a great time to go clothes shopping, and in a city like Toronto where the weather is everchanging it just makes the most sense to have a sale at the end of each season. In my opinion, these sales suck! You not going to find a great sale because a lot of spring clothes can be transition into summer and the same goes for fall clothing into winter. 

Now, if your anything like me and you come across an item that’s not on sale during these times there are still other ways to get a good price. For starters, after you bought a pair of shoes, or a jacket do you keep tabs on changes in pricing of it at the store? You can easily get a price adjustment if the item gets marked down or goes on sale within 2 weeks after you bought it. I’m always surprised by the number of men who don’t take advantage of this. Especially when it’s a luxury item! 

I want to point out that these tips are great for both in person and online shopping. However, online shopping does have one extra advantage to it. There are apps to track the prices of clothes you have an interest in. These apps will send you an email or notification when the bookmarked item is on sale. I wish we had something like that for in person shopping, that way I wouldn’t have to make so many retail friends to give me a heads up when a product comes in or is marked down. 

At the end of the day, my goal for this post is to encourage you to become a savvy shopper and take advantage of options that make building your wardrobe more affordable. As we transition out of the pandemic, sale options will look drastically different. I predict that there will be a shift in the way that sales are offered as retailers try to recoup some of the revenue lost during the pandemic. So, shop strategically my friends and don’t say I didn’t warn you.  

But let me know what you think. What kind of shopper are you? As always let’s keep the conversation gong in the comments section!