File: the hypocrisy of sales in fashion

I should have written this article a while ago, as people think they know what the sales are:

“ A time of year when brands can sell at a loss? »

Hmmmm... yes, in theory.

“ So the teacher lied to us at school? ”

Let's say that the reality is... more mixed . And our opinion on the issue has evolved over the years.

If this official version, well remembered by everyone, is still current among brands and in healthy distribution channels, it no longer reflects the majority of the market .

And as you will see, it is sometimes downright offensive .

So expect to experience a real dive into what disgusts us in this business , and there will even be trophies at the end.

We suspect that as with our articles on Web affiliation or the truth about made in France , we don't just make friends, but it's important to express what many around us think without being able to do so. as much.

And it's also important to express ourselves on our own politics .

Another era: what were sales used for when they were created?

Throughout the 20th century, sales were very useful, particularly in fashion.

Return to the era of beards and sideburns: the commercial practice appeared at the end of the 19th century in department stores .

First at Le Petit Saint-Thomas (which disappeared in 1845, editor's note) , then at Bon Marché (1852), at Printemps (1865), at the Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville and at La Samaritaine (1904).

All these stores "sold out" their unsold items from previous seasons, selling them at a reduced price: a healthy way to keep a stock of reasonable size, to continue to offer new products in subsequent seasons .

For fear that price wars would drag the market down, or that harmful commercial practices would take place (dumping strategies), a first law appeared in 1906 to regulate these practices, and many more precise developments would follow. .

And the practice has extended to other sectors of consumer goods, to arrive at modern sales as you know them:

From useful clearance to mass marketing

1. Less and less inventory, more and more sales

With the new millennium and the rise of IT and internet distribution, production techniques are experiencing a revolution: just-in-time, time-to-market, on-demand production, lower minimums, trend firms, techniques Inventory pushes and sales analysis, private sales sites.

We are then witnessing a sharp drop in unsold items, with collections four, six or eight times a year in fashion instead of the traditional spring/summer or autumn/winter. Not to mention capsule collections and limited series.

How can we explain that today 50% of clothes are sold at marked-down prices according to the French Fashion Institute , compared to 20% in 2003?

Could it be that the sales have been emptied of their substance? Let's investigate a little more...

2. Completely WTF dates

Another very strange thing: I don't know if you've already noticed, but the winter sales start at the beginning of January and the summer sales in mid-June .

In order to form my opinion, I went to interview famous personalities of quality American entertainment :

And they all said the same thing to me: WHAT THE F*CK?

Bulk :

• We clear unsold winter items 15 days after the start of winter (January 8 in 2020)
• And the "unsold items of the summer", as it begins [Editor's note initially scheduled for June 24, the sales were postponed to July 15 due to the Covid-19 crisis].

So you must be saying to yourself that things are getting really , really weird, the sales in 2020 .

The subject is not new, as early as 2016 the French Ready-to-Wear Federation expressed its opposition to this calendar.

3. Promotions all year round: but what are sales really?

Finally, why do we still have sales when brands sell all year round at discounted prices ?

It tastes and smells like Canada Dry, it's just not called "Canada Dry": Father's Day operation, spring clearance, special Christmas sales and other back-to-school reductions. We even have French e-shops that do “Black Friday” or “French Days”.

In short, many sales as practiced today ultimately consist of nothing more than a simple detail of vocabulary:

• Brands no longer have as much need as before to sell off their stocks
• Dates fall mid-season
• And anyway, promotions can be found every month for every occasion...

And there I hear some of them:

“ So it’s great, I can buy cheap braces all year round! ".

“ Well no, you are mistaken, my dear Mike” .

Because this omnipresence of reductions has very pernicious effects both for brands and for consumers...

And over the years, incessant sales and discounts have only increased the price of what you buy .

In this jungle, brands take advantage... to the point of their own loss

If many brands , continue to practice sales with honesty and reason, other practices exist.

1. Bronze scam: increasing clothing prices and selling handsomely, even on sale

Seeing that the sales marketing operation was working well, many brands started to increase the price of their clothes a little, then a little more, then a little more ...

You couldn't have noticed, it happens over years (and no, I'm not talking about inflation which is a completely different thing).

On the other hand, it is very common to inflate the price of an item of clothing just before the sales in order to then apply a very fat -40% (fraudulent).

And as more than 50% of these brands' sales are made during sales periods, they are happy to have them in the middle of the sales season: they are breaking the market for healthy brands that sell at a fair price . This explains the oddity of sales which tend to arrive earlier and last longer.

In the end, it is the multi-brand stores that charge a lot, compared to the chains and franchisees who discount all year round. We are witnessing quasi-dumping.

Today, the gross margins of chains and franchises are so important that for the majority, selling at a loss would mean applying reductions of 80% (the ratios between sales price including tax and purchase price excluding tax generally exceed x5)!

Among the brands at -40%, we find:

• Brands that have too much stock and are discounting a lot to recover cash flow

• Brands for which off-label sales have become an economic model

• And since I don't have the impression that fast fashion , chains and franchises overall are doing badly, I believe that we are often taken for kikous.

As I read on the BonneGueule forum: “ the sales are no longer an opportunity to get a good deal but to pay a fairer price ”.

2. Money scam: unofficial special sales collections

Since the soup is really good, what if we diluted it further?

This is where we arrive at a practice that is really not nice, but widespread among many very large brands (Z***, M&M, C****, J**** and other TH, RL, HB, etc.): special discount lines .

As stock supply is something these brands control very well, they have almost no seasonal stock at the time of sales. So they produce lines of quality that are still a little lower than usual, to take full advantage of consumer excitement at sales time.

In these collections specially produced for sales in very low-cost factories, it is also interesting to ask the question of their production methods:

Note that these practices are not only specific to sales, because they are also THE great classic of private sales sites and brand villages ( we already talked about it in 2011 ).

Take the test occasionally.

3. Gold scam: the same clothes in two different qualities

THE big novelty of recent years is cloned clothing (for the moment in certain chains, don't think that it's the little designer on L'Exception who does that, eh! It's actually them who suffer the most from this system).

We have the information OFF from a former marketing director of one of these brands.

This consists of the same item produced in two different qualities :

• not great A quality : but passable, sold at full price during the season,

• really disgusting B quality : especially for sales and other discounted distribution channels.

And since many people don't care as long as it's -40%, well it still works .

Question, how much longer will this last?

Sales: total obfuscation of the real value of an object

1. The emergence of consumers addicted to discount coupons

At the beginning, the sales worked very well for the brands .

They quietly sold their collections throughout the season, at prices that most people could understand. And those willing to snoop around hoping to find their size in clothes they liked waited for sales.

Seeing that it was working well, some brands started offering more and more sales and other discounts throughout the year.

And many core consumers have become veritable little discount junkies, no longer asking themselves " why are they buying an item of clothing " but " what is the % reduction on that 10th t-shirt that they could possibly need ".

Others, more civilized, do exactly the same thing behind computers. Does this really make any more sense?

2. Prices that no longer make sense and a wary consumer

Price crossed out, price blurred .

The other pernicious effect of constantly fluctuating prices is that we lose the value of things .

Is this shirt from a famous brand worth €150... or €150 - 50% = €75?

In both cases, the cost of the product remained the same . It required just as much yarn, fabric and labor. And we must not forget that for a small designer who uses beautiful materials, the creative work also has a price.

And I'm not talking about " supporting small brands " as I sometimes hear. Because it is not a question of supporting them, but simply of bringing their clothes back to their true value, that of quality .

As for us, I would 1,000 times prefer that you order our clothes because you know they are well produced and well positioned, rather than to support us .

That said, when faced with bad practices, consumers are not fooled:

So don’t we get a little “scammed by the brand” when we buy at full price? Isn't it legitimate to go for the biggest possible discounts?

IF you are buying blind: YES, WITHOUT A DOUBT.

BUT...

Educate yourself about the product to avoid sales scams

But if you think a little, try to evaluate the quality of a product, and really carefully compare the clothes with each other, then you literally arm yourself against bad practices, and get good deals all year long. .

As is often the case, it is knowledge that gives you back your power .

Become ACTORS in your consumption again by no longer confusing “paying for a part with the right quality/price ratio” and “paying for a part as cheaply as possible”.

Understanding quality allows you to only dress in clothes that are WORTH their price.

1. Knowledge that allows you to distinguish brands that cheat

Today we have a two-stage market:

• on the one hand the brands which apply the processes that I have just described,

• on the other, often smaller players, who use the sales as they should be, or who sometimes never sell their basics.

Learning to analyze the quality/price ratio of clothing allows you to make better deals , while instilling a certain justice in the market.

We are not anti-sales, however, but we simply want to invite you to think about your purchasing habits.

A system that is coming to an end

Beyond this grim observation, bad practices tend to be increasingly neglected by consumers themselves :

• 36% of French people consider that sales are no longer useful ( BVA 2012 figures ),
• 21.1% of consumers will postpone their purchases while waiting for sales in 2016 compared to 24.3% in 2015, or -3.2 points ( TOLUNA figures for LSA 2015 ),
• 60% of respondents think that sales are losing interest due to an overabundance of promotions ( YUGOV 2015 figures ).

And more and more brands are simply stopping having sales.

Is another model possible? (the case of BonneGueule)

1. Some examples of brands that do not have sales

This season, we have seen many brands refuse sales (or almost): Suitsupply , Le Pantalon , Maison Standards .

Refusing sales for a brand is therefore not utopian, and it is a phenomenon that will continue to develop.

2. On our side: the notion of “fair price”

All our work consists of producing clothing at the right price : the minimum price that allows us to be profitable while giving ourselves the capacity to develop new products and services.

And to explain why this price is fair : quality/price ratio, artisanal techniques, value-added materials, etc.

We therefore decided not to have sales on our own clothing line . Especially since our clothes are timeless basics.

Entering into this game clothes sold too expensively and then selling them at the right price on sale would make no sense either for you (being lost again in the midst of changing prices), or for us (love of a job well done) .

3. Produce at a fair cost to sell at a fair price

If we can sell at a fair price, it is also because we know how to produce at a fair cost.

Indeed, our economic model allows us to scuttle the non-value-creating expenses that traditional brands are forced to inflict on themselves:

• Very low product development costs : by producing a limited number of pieces, all timeless, relying on economies of scale by concentrating volumes. This also allows us to better master each part and each material.

• Very low advertising costs : tons of euros are burned every day in glossy paper in magazines and other ceremonial expenses. We prefer to have reasonable advertising budgets (between 6% and 7% of our turnover), write the articles we like and let word of mouth spread 😉

• Direct sales without distributors: the distributor usually captures more than half of the price of the garment. By doing everything ourselves, we reinvest this value in the quality of the product.

4. Sales all year round at BonneGueule

In the end, we invest all this money saved in the quality/price ratio of the clothing, and we remain competitive even during sales periods .

You now know why there will be no sales at BonneGueule, and above all, why it is a good thing.

But above all, I hope that this overview of the industry will have made you think and will allow you to consume better, from fashion to TVs, bicycles and furniture :)

Note (March 22, 2016): The article caused a lot of discussion, and notably sparked television appearances. We recommend this report from France 4 which features Geoffrey (between 32min20 and 41min40) and completes this article.