File: the hypocrisy of sales in fashion

It's been a while since I should have written this article, as people think they know what 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 just say that the reality is... more mixed . And our opinion on the matter has evolved over the years.

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

And you'll see, it's sometimes downright offensive .

So expect to experience a real dive into what disgusts us and dislikes 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 people around us think without being able to do the same.

And it is also important for us to express our own policy .

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

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

Back to the days 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), Printemps (1865), Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville and La Samaritaine (1904).

All these stores were "selling off" their unsold items from previous seasons, selling them at a reduced price: a healthy way of keeping a reasonably sized stock, in order to continue offering new items in the following seasons .

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

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

From useful clearance to the big marketing mass

1. Less and less stock, more and more sales

With the new millennium and the rise of IT and internet distribution, production techniques are undergoing a revolution: lean production, time-to-market, production on demand, lower minimums, trend agencies, advanced inventory and sales analysis techniques, private sales sites.

We are then seeing 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 then can we explain that today 50% of clothes are sold at discounted prices according to the French Fashion Institute , compared to 20% in 2003?

Could it be that the sales have been drained of substance? Let's investigate a little further...

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 an opinion, I went to interview famous personalities from quality American entertainment :

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

Bulk :

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

Now you must be thinking that this is becoming a really , really weird thing, the sales in 2020 .

The subject is not new; in 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 that it's not called "Canada Dry": Father's Day operation, spring clearance, special Christmas sales and other back-to-school discounts. 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 need to sell off their stocks as much as before
• Dates fall in mid-season
• And anyway, we find promotions every month for every occasion...

And there I hear some of them:

“ So that’s great, I can buy cheap suspenders 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, the constant sales and discounts have only increased the price of what you buy .

In this jungle, brands take advantage... until their own downfall

If many brands , continue to practice sales honestly and reasonably, other practices exist.

1. Bronze scam: increase the prices of clothes and sell them at a high price, 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 again ...

You may not 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 a garment just before the sales in order to then apply a very fat (fraudulent) -40%.

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

In the end, it is the multi-brand stores that are paying the price, compared to the chains and franchises that discount all year round. We are witnessing quasi-dumping.

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

Among the brands at -40%, we therefore find:

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

• Brands for whom discount sales have become an economic model

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

As I read on the BonneGueule forum: " 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 come to a really unpleasant practice, but widespread among many very big brands (Z***, M&M, C****, J**** and other TH, RL, HB, etc.): special discount lines .

Since stock supply is something these brands control extremely 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 the consumer excitement at the time of sales.

In these collections specially produced for the 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 it is 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 new thing in recent years is cloned clothing (for the moment in some chains, don't think that it's the little designer on L'Exception who does that! They are the ones who suffer the most from this system).

We have this information off the record from a former marketing director of one of these brands.

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

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

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

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

Question, how long will this last?

Sales: total confusion over the real value of an object

1. The emergence of consumers addicted to discount coupons

At first, sales worked very well for brands .

They quietly sold their collections throughout the season, at prices that were understandable to most people. And those willing to rummage around in the hope of finding their size in clothes they liked waited for the sales.

Seeing that it was working well, some brands started to offer more and more sales and other reductions throughout the year.

And many basic consumers have become real little discount junkies, no longer asking themselves " why are they buying a garment " but " what is the % off on that 10th T-shirt they might possibly need ."

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

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

Crossed out price, blurred price .

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 the same amount of thread, fabric and labor. And we must not forget that for a small designer who uses beautiful materials, the work of creation also has a price.

And I'm not talking about " supporting small brands " as I sometimes hear. Because it's not about supporting them, but simply about 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 aren't we getting a bit "ripped off by the brand" when we buy at full price? Isn't it legitimate to turn to the biggest possible discounts?

IF you are buying blindly: 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 clothes with each other, then you literally arm yourself against bad practices, and make good deals all year round .

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

Become an ACTOR in your consumption again by no longer confusing "paying for a part at the right quality/price ratio" with "paying for a part as cheaply as possible".

Understanding quality means you can only wear clothes that are WORTH the price.

1. Knowledge that allows us to distinguish brands that cheat

Today we have a two-stage market:

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

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

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

We're not anti-sales, but we just want to invite you to think about your shopping habits.

A system that is coming to an end

Beyond this gloomy observation, bad practices tend to be increasingly abandoned 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 pending sales in 2016 compared to 24.3% in 2015, i.e. -3.2 points ( TOLUNA figures for LSA 2015 ),
• 60% of those surveyed think that sales are losing interest due to an overabundance of promotions ( YOUGOV 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 is about producing a garment at the right price : the minimum price that allows us to be profitable while giving us the capacity to develop new products and services.

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

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

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

3. Produce at the right cost to sell at the right 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 sabotage 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 control each piece and each material.

• Very low advertising costs : truckloads of euros are burned every day on glossy paper in magazines and other fancy 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 do the trick 😉

• 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 .

Now you know why there won't be any sales at BonneGueule, and above all, why it's actually 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, including bicycles and furniture 🙂

Note (March 22, 2016): The article has been widely talked about, and has notably generated TV appearances. We recommend this report from France 4 which features Geoffrey (between 32min20 and 41min40) and complements this article.