I recently wrote about going suit shopping and not buying the items the salesman offered to me in the upsell. After I bought the suits, I went back home to take inventory of my clothing and to find a few items to get rid of (I have a rule when I buy new clothing, I have to get rid of old clothing so I don’t have a lot of clutter ñ or clothes I no longer wear taking up space). As I was going through my closet, I realized that I didn’t have the white and blue shirts that I had thought I did when I was at the suit store. I actually did need a new white dress shirt and a blue one as well.
I knew that the shirts at the suit store were buy one get one free, but one shirt cost $85 (or $42.50 when you factor in the discount). That was a little more than I was looking to spend. So I started to shop around. I went to a local mall and found myself in Macy’s. I like this store for dress shirts since they tend to have good sales and carry a variety of brands that I like. Sadly, the sale they had wasn’t great.
The sale they had was buy one, get one free, with the price of one shirt being $75 (or $37.50 after discount). They also had a buy one, get one 25% off sale on some other brands, but I didn’t see any shirts I liked in blue that I was looking for. I left there empty handed and shopped around at a bunch of other stores in the mall hoping to find my shirts. I ended up not finding anything to my liking or in my price range.
On the drive home, I stopped by another mall (I live in a highly populated area and there are 2 malls within 20 minutes of my house). I walked into Macy’s to find to my surprise a different sale going on. In this Macy’s, they didn’t have the buy one, get one sales, just a straight discount of 30%.
I ended up finding both shirts I wanted for $27 apiece. This shocked me as I thought since Macy’s is nationwide, the sale at two different stores so close by would have the same sales. I certainly learned something!
The moral of the story is to make sure you shop around. Not only did I learn that stores have different sales online versus in-store (like the suit store) but I also learned that the same store in different malls/locations could have different sales as well.
So, make it a point to shop around when looking to buy something. You never know what store might have the sale that makes the item fall into your price point. Additionally, some stores might carry different sizes/styles of the item that will impact whether or not you buy. Of course, you should shop around within reason. Driving all around wasting gas isn’t the smartest thing to do.
If after visiting a few stores you still come up empty, make it a point to try looking online and having the shirt shipped to you. While you won’t be able to try it on, it will save you time and money by not driving around looking at different stores for the item in question.
