The Language of Sales

From June 30 to August 31, Hong Kong is celebrating its annual Sale season. This is a bit of an overkill considering that someone, somewhere in HK is having a sale all year round. Take one of my favorite local brands - http://www.izzue.com - as an example. They have a sale every three months, that's why locals don't buy there until they see the sale sign up front.

There are 3 levels of sales here, and the amount of stuff you buy should depend on which of these 3 signs you see:

1. Sale - This means prices are down 20-30% off. If you're looking at popular brands like Zara, FCUK and Mango, you should buy things that you really, REALLY lust for this early because chances are, someone's going to snap it up if you don't. That's the difference I noticed with shoppers here, when they want something, they buy it immediately.

2. Further Sale - At this point, you can expect a 40-50% discount on items, and you can expect stocks to disappear even faster. That's why you should stand outside the shop early and get first dibs on everything. The downside of Further Sales is that most of the "popular sizes" are already out of stock. Now unfortunately, my waist size (30-31) is popular here, so I lose out on a lot of jeans and trousers. Thankfully, my feet are big by HK standards (10-11), so I can still get the shoes I want!

3. Final Sale - That's 70% off on the retail price, while some can even go down to 80%. Expect mayhem at this stage and expect Zara Man to have just a few pieces left on their racks. People snap up Zara here like they buy pancit canton at the Jolli-jeep in Makati. But for local brands, you can still wait until it reaches 70% because they'll have a lot of styles and sizes on stock anyway. For ladies stuff, wait until final sale because you get more for your money and yet still have more to choose from.

At this stage, most of the the stores here are on "FINAL SALE" mode. Makes me wonder how much they'll have left in August, considering that the sale should be until August 31. The people who'll go in August will probably be disappointed because of the lack of choices - but then again, if they're looking for good and cheap clothes, they can always go to Shenzhen.