#OutletMalls #ShoppingDeals #RetailTherapy #Savings #Discounts
If you’ve ever wondered whether outlet malls are actually giving you a good deal on things, you’re not alone. With outlet malls popping up in seemingly every town these days, it’s natural to question whether the discounts they offer are truly worth it. Let’s take a closer look at how outlet malls work and whether they are as good of a deal as they claim to be.
##How Do Outlet Malls Actually Work?
Outlet malls are retail centers that house a variety of designer and brand name stores, offering their merchandise at discounted prices. These discounted prices are often marketed as being a steal compared to what you would find at a regular retail store. But how do outlet malls actually make this possible? Here’s how:
1. **Manufacturers and Retailers:**
– Outlet malls often feature stores operated by the same manufacturers and retailers you would find in regular malls.
– These stores sell merchandise that is either overstocked, out of season, or made specifically for outlet malls.
– By selling these items at a lower price point, manufacturers and retailers are able to clear out excess inventory and make room for new products.
2. **Quality of Merchandise:**
– One common misconception about outlet malls is that they sell lower quality items compared to regular retail stores.
– While some items may be specifically produced for outlet malls, the majority of merchandise sold at outlets is of similar quality to what you would find in regular stores.
3. **Pricing Strategies:**
– Outlet malls use pricing strategies to make customers feel like they are getting a good deal.
– “Compare at” prices are often displayed next to outlet prices, suggesting that you are saving a significant amount by shopping at the outlet mall.
– However, it’s important to take these comparisons with a grain of salt, as the “compare at” prices may not always reflect the true value of the item.
##Are Outlet Malls Actually Giving You a Good Deal?
Now that we understand how outlet malls work, the big question remains: are they actually giving you a good deal on things? The answer is not always straightforward, as it depends on several factors:
1. **Comparison Shopping:**
– To determine whether you are getting a good deal at an outlet mall, it’s important to do some comparison shopping.
– Check the prices of similar items at regular retail stores to see if the discounts at the outlet mall are truly worth it.
2. **Seasonal and Overstocked Items:**
– Keep in mind that many items sold at outlet malls are either out of season or overstocked.
– While you may be able to find some great deals on these items, it’s important to consider whether they are items you truly need or want.
3. **Sales and Promotions:**
– Just like regular retail stores, outlet malls often have sales and promotions to entice customers.
– Keep an eye out for additional discounts on top of already reduced prices to maximize your savings.
4. **Membership Programs:**
– Some outlet malls offer membership programs that provide additional discounts and perks to loyal customers.
– If you frequently shop at a particular outlet mall, consider signing up for their membership program to take advantage of exclusive offers.
##Conclusion
In conclusion, outlet malls can be a great place to find deals on designer and brand name items, but it’s important to approach shopping at outlet malls with a critical eye. By understanding how outlet malls work and doing your research, you can ensure that you are actually getting a good deal on things. So next time you find yourself at an outlet mall, remember to compare prices, consider the quality of the merchandise, and take advantage of any sales or promotions to make the most of your shopping experience. Happy shopping! 🛍️
Outlet stores generally sell two types of merchandise:
1. Main store merchandise that hasn’t moved and is out of season. You generally have a low selection of sizes/styles/colors, since it’s on close-out. This is where you get “deals” but you actually have to find them
2. Many brands have cheaper production lines that make cheaper merchandise *solely* for the outlet stores (i.e., they were never in the flagship to begin with). They are hoping that the name brand helps them get the sale, and you’re definitely not getting a “deal” – you’re paying a lower price for a lower quality product.
No, they’re not especially good deals. They can be fairly inexpensive, but that’s because the quality tends to be low.
“Premium brands” generally have different, low-quality, lines that they make specifically for outlet stores.
Yes and no. There’s a couple of things going on. First, outlet malls tend to get outdated stuff that may not have sold during the first run. Just leftover inventory.
But there are also new products that are made for the outlet malls that are made more cheaply. For example, I wear New Balance 574s. I can’t find those at outlets, but I can find 515s, which are a slightly cheaper made version that I can only find in Outlet/discount type stores. You can’t even find them on New Balance’s website.
Originally, outlet malls sold excess, out of season, or prior year styles at discounts and were typically located on the outskirts of metro areas, as to not directly compete with or cannibalize stores selling full-priced apparel.
Today though, it’s kind of hit or miss. Like others have said, many retailers now make apparel specifically for sale at outlets that are not the same as you’d find at their standard retail, so the answer it that it really just depends. If the outlet is located in (or in the immediate vicinity) of a major city, it almost certainly is not a “true” outlet.
Originally? Yes. Today? Not so much.
In the fashion world, designers release new designs on a regular cadence. To remain relevant, retailers have to get rid of last year’s designs to make way for this year’s designs. They do this by putting last year’s designs on clearance sales before they have to put this year’s designs on the racks.
But even those big sales don’t clear out all of the inventory of last year’s designs, particularly if certain items weren’t popular. Or maybe the most popular sizes get cleared out, but less popular sizes don’t sell. Or whatever. Additionally the retailers of the clothing only put error-free clothing on the racks. So if a buttonhole is off because of manufacturer error or there’s a scratch in the leather on a jacket or bag, those can’t go on the shelf at the retailer.
Retailers used to just junk all these leftovers or damaged goods that wouldn’t sell. Occasionally these retailers would have outlet stores in out-of-the-way places where budget conscious-shoppers could buy this damaged goods, overstock, or out-of-date designs at a steep discount. Then sometime in the 80’s some smart real estate developers realized that they could build a strip mall, get all of the retailers to put their outlet shops in that strip mall, and market the whole set of retailer outlets to those budget-conscious shoppers.
They took off like wildfire in the 80’s and 90’s … and that’s when things started to go awry.
Because the retailers saw the popularity and demand among budget-conscious shoppers and thought to themselves “Hey, these cheapskates don’t care about the most current style or best quality — I bet there’s money to be made there!” So instead of just offloading the overstock, out-of-date designs, or damaged goods of their top quality *haute couture* lines, these retailers started basically *manufacturing their own knock-offs*.
Want an Armani suit? You used to have two options:
* Go to an Armani store and buy a $5000 Armani suit, constructed by hand in Italy, and custom tailored to you in the Armani store
* Go to an Armani shop in an outlet mall, hope they have a suit in your size, buy that Armani suit off the rack — but still constructed by hand in Italy — for, say, $1000 (because it has a tear in the lining that no one will ever see or stain on the lower left calf), and take it to your own tailor to be fitted.
Nowadays — because designer brands and retailers caught on that budget-consious people want an Armani suit at 20% of the price — you have a third option:
* Go to an Armani shop in an outlet mall, and forget about finding an actual Armani quality suit (because there are, like, 7 of those hidden in some backroom) and instead you can buy an “Armani” suit off the rack for $1000 that has been mass-produced in a factroy in Thailand by the same company that produces the $300 suits at Macy’s (and with the same lower quality fabrics and craft) — but you get to pay $700 extra for it because Armani has slapped an Armani label on it and put it up for sale on the rack in an Armani Outlet Store. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
That still can vary store by store in an outlet mall — some retailers/brands/designers still sell their overstock / damaged / last-year’s-design work. But nearly all of the stores *also* have cheaper, lower-quality knockoffs of their high fashion offerings that they’ve slapped their brand on for the budget-conscious-but-also-brand-conscious buyer.
(Also, I’m not picking on Armani. I just picked the first high end fashion brand I could think of. I’ve never been in an Armani store or an Armani outlet, and my two suits are from Macy’s and Men’s Warehouse. So who am I to talk? My ex-wife though — she spent a *lot* of our money on absolute garbage at outlet malls because it had a designer logo on it.)
I Live near a world famous (not kidding about the world famous part. They advertise in Europe and China and probably 90% of the business comes from these tourists) outlet mall. The stores used to be true outlets (past season or clothes that were damaged or returned). Now many stores have merchandise that is “made for the outlet”. Probably lesser quality than the stuff that would have come from their stores that did not sell. All a bunch of bs
Imagine if Mercedes let Hyundai use their name and logo to sell cars in an area where Mercedes doesn’t have any dealerships and doesn’t sell cars. Like, idk, El Salvador or Eritrea.
So, you are buying a car that looks like a Mercedes, has a Mercedes logo/badge, and it says Mercedes… but it’s actually a cheaply made piece of junk made by Hyundai and sold to rubes who don’t know better.
That’s what an outlet mall is.
They’re typically out in BFE where land is cheap and taxes are low, and also where the brand doesn’t have their own stores. You get cheaply made crap from some 2nd rate sweatshop that just happens to use the same brand logo, so now, poor country folk can buy “Ralph Lauren” polo shirts (and one of the sleeves is a little shorter than the other, but who really notices that?).
All the furniture ( pottery barn , RH , west elm , CB ) outlets are the returns / refused deliveries as well as damaged items .
All the ones that offer white glove service that you inspect before they leave
Friend went to one saw the lamp she returned with her address label still on it half crossed off .
For off-season made-for-mainline products yea it is a decent deal. For factory seconds it is okay. For made-for-outlet it is not anything special and certainly not a “deal”.
We have a few outlet malls here in Washington state, north of Seattle, and it’s become quite clear that they are selling lower quality stuff. Clothing, shoes, etc. are noticeably different vs. regular mall stores of the same name. I used to get shoes at the outlets, but stopped a while back.
The one I went to had “retail price” manipulation tricks. Retail price some absurd amount for some no name shirt or pair of jeans marked down then clearenced often and still overpriced for what it was. It didn’t even work on me when I was 13-14 years old I went to a few a couple of times and they were overpriced at least where I lived and back in 2007-2008. The “savings” were often absurd like 60%+ and still not a good deal.
When I was in upstate New York we used to joke about the outlet store exit off the Thruway… everything was more expensive there and they’d bus in hundreds of tourists a day who still seemed to love to shop there. Now I live abroad and I get it. When a pair of jeans costs over $120 in your local city and you can’t find your familiar brands and every store has store brands of varying and questionable quality… being able to go to one place for half a day and do a year’s worth of clothes shopping and know exactly what you’re getting and take care of it all at once is amazing.
If I ever move back to the States I may continue to go because it’s so much easier to find things. It’s like if instead of scammy counterfeit Amazon stuff or select-brand department stores, you can just get exactly what you want when you want it for a fairly reasonable price.
It depends. Sometimes they will be selling slightly inferior things so you get the brand name but not the same level of quality (however, this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be Shein or Walmart quality, it might just be not as good as the original high end brand). Sometimes they’ll be selling the same stuff as the original, but it’s out of season, overstock, or a less popular style. Sometimes it’s literally the same store as in a regular mall, and you’re not even getting a discount.
It really depends. It’s totally possible to get great deals at an outlet mall, but you’ll need to be familiar with a certain brand’s quality and prices to be sure.
Good deals? Often/Some times, depending on the store and what you’re looking for.
How they work? They buy items from stores rather than suppliers. Instead of putting orders in for products, they make offers to buy inventory that is overstocked, out of season, etc. There’s actually a few reasons why perfectly good products get liquidated, like the last few items before a brand changed their label or packaging. The stores assume these items won’t sell fast enough to merit the shelf space, so they chock it up to a loss and often sell at or below what it cost them.
The Finger Lakes Outlet Mall here in NY isn’t really about “outlet” merchandise at all. It’s really just a typical mall, and in some cases have prices HIGHER than if you travel to a non-outlet mall. And, in fact, some of the stores there are only there because they don’t have a presence elsewhere in the area, and they are charging premium prices for their gear. It feels more than a little scammy. In my experience, only about 10% of the stores at that outlet mall would really meet the standard you’d expect.
Stores like Ross and Marshalls have some good deals but those are a different type of “outlet”.
The ones you’re talking about are total garbage in my experience.
So back BACK in the day they were. However these days Outlet Malls as we know them are tailored to give you the illusion of getting a good deal.
The quality of the items is ususally vastly inferior to what you’d see in store. Think of Old Navy, J. Crew, Aeropostale, Nike, Reebook any of them are lower quality than what you’d find for the higher price in a normal store.
I’ve worked for a number of these companies and anything that WAS higher quality usually was repurposed from defects in terms of the denim run, cosmetics that were lower grade (think Chanel, Estee Lauder, Polo etc).
In my experience, outlet malls sell high end stuff that hasn’t sold in regular stores. So you’re paying for expensive items at a discount. You’re better off buying regular items at Target or Walmart, IMHO.
I live near an “outlet mall.” When it first opened, it was outlet stores with decent deals.
I’ve noticed lately that it’s become a “high end mall” and most of the stores there are no longer outlet stores… they’re trendy, upscale, and expensive stores, but people around here still call it an “outlet mall.”
I don’t know if that’s a national bait and switch trend or anything, but I figured I’d throw that out there. Last time I went there hoping to find good deals, and everything was higher priced than if I had just gone to Walmart.
A little off the subject, but are “Mills” malls similar to outlet malls?