This day last week, six full days before Christmas Day, the Arnotts shop floor was festooned with red and white signs advertising discounts of up to 50 per cent across a range of clothes and homewares.
And Arnott’s was by no means an outlier. Across the road in Marks & Spencer, there were discounts of 20 per cent on offer, while sale signs had also appeared in the windows of other retailers across the country.
They are all signs of our times and evidence that the winter sales season that was once so sacrosanct – at least among the nation’s keenest bargain hunters – is now a shadow of its former self.
Going into sale the week before Christmas and barely three weeks after the Black Friday sales and just six weeks after the mid-season sales and a week before the winter sales is proof, if it were needed, that there is something wrong with Irish retail.
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“The winter sales have been dragging on for months,” says retail consultant Eddie Shanahan. “Signs in shop windows promising up to 70 per cent off in the week before Christmas have to be an indicator of how retail has been trading and it’s not just in Dublin, it’s around the country.”
He says retailers everywhere are “having a hard time and that’s not entirely down to the consumer not spending. It’s also a hangover from Covid and a sign that the retailers are not creating desire.”
He suggests that some retailers have become increasingly focused on “offering zero-hour contracts than they are in developing career paths. We have to get back to offering career paths for people in retail if we’re to have people on the shop floor who are genuinely motivated to serve customers and engage with them.”
According to Shanahan, “You win market share by winning mind share first, and the service has to extend beyond the physical store into the digital experience. The two of them must be seen not as separate operations but as opposite sides of the same coin. People go online to research, then they go into the store to shop or they walk into the store at lunchtime and they research and then they go online and buy that evening.”
He also identifies another issue that almost compels shops to spend so much time holding sales. “Too many shops have become homogenous, and retailers seem to have lost that point of difference and the sad thing is that a lot of what can make a retailer difference is here on their doorstep in Ireland.”
He references the Brown Thomas Create event which takes place every autumn and sees Irish designers given the chance to sell in-store for six weeks with the potential for a long-term presence if sales go well.
“And Arnotts in the beauty space is strong and is reaching a competitive standard internationally. It is doing very well in terms of satisfying that middle market and still offering value.”
Whatever about creating a unique proposition, what about the sales, if retailers are forever in sale, where is all the discounted stock coming from?
“It’s a combination of things,” Shanahan says. “Retailers make mistakes and overbuy so then they have to convert the stock into cash and reduce the price. Sometimes they are offered stock by a third party, a supplier or wholesaler and they buy that at a discounted price to sell it at full price leading up to a sale, after which they discount it sharply.”
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He notes that when it comes to the sales, too many wrongly conflate price and value. “They are not the same thing,” he says simply.
“I have jackets and shoes in my wardrobe and they’re 10 to 25 years old and I still wear them because I spent a little bit more on them at the time,” he points out, stressing that had he bought his clothes at the cheapest price point, they would most likely be in landfill right now.
He advises people to look hard at what is in the sales.
“There are some good bargains to be had, particularly when it comes to quality products that were overbought or overproduced. The problem is when it’s not a quality product or when it’s faulty in terms of its fit or its manufacture or whatever, or if is about to become obsolete or out of fashion.”
He says a beauty counter might be selling lipsticks with a big discount but says people should ask why they are discounted. “It probably means those colors are obsolete and there are 24 new colors coming in January.”
He says the other question people should ask is do they need it rather than want it, and he says if you don’t need it then don’t buy it.
“If I am going to supplement or augment my house or my wardrobe, I’ll do it after the sale so I won’t have to spend twice on the product. Once on the thing I should not have bought and then again when I buy the thing I need to buy because I want to be smart or fashionable or whatever.”
He say the most important message as we head into the winter sales 2024 is sustainability with cost per wear more important than upfront price.
“You look at the quality of the manufacture and the finish, the design and so on. That’s where you get the value. Unfortunately, most days in the newspapers, on the radio and on the television we hear people talking about value and they mean price alone.”
That is not to say he doesn’t think sales offer value.
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“The best advice I would give people is to buy the basics in the sales but buy the basic quality items, your jocks and socks, and make sure that they’re not going to unravel the first time you wash them. Ask yourself what basics do you need and how do I get the stuff that’ll last me for the year or two years. Just buy the basic things that are discounted but are still of acceptable quality, that is the secret.”
Although he is not the biggest fan of sales, there are plenty of people who are.
Every year Pricewatch is out and about before dawn on St Stephen’s Day, and there are always people queueing outside the big department stores before they open. Most are in the queues for the craic and few of them have a particular product in mind.
At least Brown Thomas and Arnotts will be giving people a lie-in today with the shops not opening until 10am. Ryan’s of Galway, and Shaws in Limerick open today, while the rest of Shaws stores open tomorrow. Avoca stores will also hold off until tomorrow.
Jean McCabe is the head of Retail Excellence, the umbrella group representing thousands of shops across Ireland. She also owns Willow, a clothes shop in Ennis, Co Clare, so knows a thing or two about sales.
She is not their biggest fan, at least when it comes to shopping in them.
She accepts that some people really see the value in them. She has long noticed the distinction in her own shop between customers who come in year-round and shop for pleasure, calmly going through the racks and happy to pay a higher price for things they really want.
Then there are the entirely different set of shoppers who are happy to brave the madness of the crowds because they are seeking out lower prices and what they perceive as better value.
“Personally, I like to browse and when I see something I really like I buy it,” she says.
When shopping in the sales, she echoes Shanahan when she says, the “real opportunity is buying something of quality that you will have for a long time. I think the real value is buying quality over quantity and buying something that might be a high-ticket item. In the winter sale you will save on it but you’re actually getting something good that will last for a few years. That’s where the real value is as opposed to buying something cheap and cheerful for the sake of it that ends up in the bin in six months.”
She believes there is still value to be found despite the almost constant sales windows but it depends on the sector and sometimes external conditions.
“Fashion retail is so determined by the weather. This year, for example, September and October were very mild so shops were looking at shelves of knitwear and rails of heavy outerwear and that would determine discounting in those categories. You might see the same thing in a garden centre that is overstocked with garden furniture and barbecues because of the summer that never came.”
As to the timing, she says the first hours of the sale are critical. “Retailers discount a product based on its perception of value with the customer and the stuff that you see discounted further at the end of the sale is just what people weren’t interested in. The best products are always snapped up at the beginning of the sale and that is when the best opportunity of getting something of real value is to be found.”
