Back to School Sales? good or bad for retailers?

[Tiny]

I haven't been paying much attention - and not much was splashed across the headlines that I saw. 

Were Back to School sales good for retailers this year?    

It's like the sales came and went without notice (atleast from me... I don' t have kids and didn't need office supply stuff this year).   Usually I see something "back to school" related but this year not so much. 

I did see Halloween (and some Christmas) stuff is being displayed (was at Sam's Club last night).   

[obelisk]

The mall was empty on Sunday before school started. We did not buy anything for our 10 year old for his new school year.

[thyme4change]

Do people still have the "back to school" tradition of buying clothes and such? We have never done a lot of that because our weather doesn't change until after the first quarter is over. My daughter will buy stuff in the summer and wear it "new" at the beginning of school, but she will shop any month. My son wears the same thing every day, and when it gets chilly in the morning he will throw on a sweatshirt. That won't be until December. So, no real need to shop for clothes.

[Deleted]

Aug 29, 2019 15:10:35 GMT -5 thyme4change said:

Do people still have the "back to school" tradition of buying clothes and such?

I know people that do that and sometimes go all out, but it's not my idea of a good time, so I don't...with the exception of shoes.  I usually use back to school as a reminder to look at my kids feet and often their shoes are falling apart, so I get new ones.

I get bombarded with enough back to school/activities expenses as it is in August.  I don't want to add a bunch of new clothes to the list. 

[movingforward]

Texas has a tax free weekend right before school starts so the stores here are always packed with back to school shoppers.

[NoNamePerson]

Aug 29, 2019 15:46:00 GMT -5 movingforward said:

Texas has a tax free weekend right before school starts so the stores here are always packed with back to school shoppers.

Same here. I make it a point to never go near the stores during that weekend. Well, except for one year when I needed new PC and found good deal and tax free on top of that but I try to stay clear.

[Deleted]

Tax-free weekend is big in Alabama, too.  And it is not just for kids.  Adults can buy clothing, etc. as long it falls under the guidelines.  The stores are always packed.

Back-to-school shopping, though, to me is the list of supplies that teachers send out.  My list was pretty modest - paper, pen, and notecards.  I took the notecards up and distributed them as needed, including for other classes.  Before Chrome books, I used to have liquid paper as an optional item.  I ended up with about 75 bottles.  Lol.  I never had to ask for it again. 

[nidena]

DE is always tax free so that isn't an incentive here.  There were a number of folks at the local mall on Sunday this past weekend but I think most people spend their money on school supplies rather than school clothes.  However, Lands' End has been hopping when it comes to school uniform purchases.

[tskeeter]

Was at Office Depot this AM.  Back to school shopping was in full swing.  Lots of kids with parents.

[giramomma]

School supplies: I shop loss leaders. We spent under $150 for school supplies for 3 kids. That includes two pair of brand new gym shoes, a new backpack for DD1, and extra supplies to donate.

We also got 95% of our shopping done by the end of July..because August just evaporated.

ETA: We don't do clothing per say, but we did do a target run and picked up a few cute shirts for the peanut. Unicorns, planets, and dinosaurs...hard to find shirts like that very often.. The rest of her clothes are hand me downs..so.. it's nice to get a few new things.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

We do clothes.  I use back to school as a handy reminder to go thru the kids' closet and dresser to find everything that no longer fits and take inventory for the upcoming seasons.    I then shop deals accordingly.  I do the same thing when school ends.   I find it a pretty efficient system for rotating stuff out the door.

[ohmomto2boys]

<p>We do school supplies per the list supplied for each grade by the school. We don't do a huge purchase of clothes. My kids are still growing so we buy throughout the year. They will both need pants once the weather turns cold.....that could be end of September or end of October, you never know what you are going to get in Ohio.</p><p><br></p>

[Deleted]

"Sales" are always bad for retailers because it creates an artificial demand that completely jerks around their supply chains.  At least back to school sales are planned, the ones that really wreak havoc are the unplanned ones that are done based on poor prior results.

[nidena]

Aug 30, 2019 7:10:08 GMT -5 giramomma said:

School supplies: I shop loss leaders. We spent under $150 for school supplies for 3 kids. That includes two pair of brand new gym shoes, a new backpack for DD1, and extra supplies to donate.

We also got 95% of our shopping done by the end of July..because August just evaporated.

ETA: We don't do clothing per say, but we did do a target run and picked up a few cute shirts for the peanut. Unicorns, planets, and dinosaurs...hard to find shirts like that very often.. The rest of her clothes are hand me downs..so.. it's nice to get a few new things.

Why Lands' End doesn't just call them "kids clothes" I don't know but we've some great graphic tees in boys and girls.

[buystoys]

Aug 30, 2019 8:55:08 GMT -5 @aj said:

"Sales" are always bad for retailers because it creates an artificial demand that completely jerks around their supply chains.  At least back to school sales are planned, the ones that really wreak havoc are the unplanned ones that are done based on poor prior results.

When I was working in Supply Chain, we used to track all the additional units we shipped in for promotions so that we wouldn't have "unexpected" sales in the customer demand.  Fortunately, we kept our data pretty clean and were able to identify for our customers what wasn't "real" demand unless they were going to run the same promotion again.  We saw lots of promotions for Back to School and holiday.

BTS can be difficult on the Supply Chain because pretty much everyone is lean on inventory.  If your production capacity can't flip on quickly and ship the additional volume, SC has to plan production further ahead and hold inventory in order to meet demand.  There's a cost associated with that.  We used to offer a couple of major customers a discounted price on their BTS items as well.

[muttleynfelix]

I bought nothing for back to schools. I ordered the supplies through the PTO because finding the exact right item pissed me off so bad the first 2 times I tried to do it, I just gave up. I need to see if the kids need pants next month or so, but I'll hit the consignment store. I did buy DS some socks on Amazon and underwear for myself. I've just been having a hard time getting to a store.

[thyme4change]

Aug 29, 2019 16:14:20 GMT -5 @bamafan1954 said:

Tax-free weekend is big in Alabama, too.  And it is not just for kids.  Adults can buy clothing, etc. as long it falls under the guidelines.  The stores are always packed.
 

My kids have been in adult sizes for a few years, and they were smaller than a lot of their friends, so I would hope that "adult sizes" are still accepted as school clothing. Otherwise you are screwing over half the school population.

[Deleted]

Aug 30, 2019 12:07:59 GMT -5 thyme4change said:

Aug 29, 2019 16:14:20 GMT -5 @bamafan1954 said:

Tax-free weekend is big in Alabama, too.  And it is not just for kids.  Adults can buy clothing, etc. as long it falls under the guidelines.  The stores are always packed.
 

My kids have been in adult sizes for a few years, and they were smaller than a lot of their friends, so I would hope that "adult sizes" are still accepted as school clothing. Otherwise you are screwing over half the school population.

Of course.  But what I meant is that we all take advantage of it.  That is when I shop for new socks, underwear, etc.

[bean29]

Well, I don't think we have a tax holiday in Wisconsin...but I was going to order from Eddie Baurer this am. They have 50% off on almost everything and 60% off sale. I did not pull the trigger though. It is sitting in my cart.

I did order a top from White house black market though. I got 70% off and I really love it.

I also got a new Bra from SOMA last Sunday for $15.

I plan to buy some curtains from BB&B or Target before Sunday's additional Tariff's go in place.

I need want a new refrigerator though, and I decided that can wait.  I also thought about buying a new car - in addition to a new Tariff, our state tax is changing on Trade-in's where the whole purchase price of your car is going to be taxed.  I figured it would only save me around one month's car payment, and I think we can go a year - I was not counting the additional tariff though.  Maybe I should shop tomorrow.

[tskeeter]

Aug 30, 2019 8:55:08 GMT -5 @aj said:

"Sales" are always bad for retailers because it creates an artificial demand that completely jerks around their supply chains.  At least back to school sales are planned, the ones that really wreak havoc are the unplanned ones that are done based on poor prior results.

Agree with your assessment that sales cause spikes in the supply chain.  But, sales are a device to drive volume.  The regional retailer that I worked for just out of college had regular planned sales at the same time every year.  These sales did three things.  They attracted attention and drove a tremendous amount of volume.  They brought people in to the stores to help clear out the remains of last season’s inventory.  So we didn’t have to store it or sell it at give away prices.  And they brought people in to the stores to move a bunch of the new season’s inventory before we had to pay the invoices for the new inventory.  If we did it right, we could generate nearly enough cash to pay the invoices for the new inventory when they came due.  Sales also gave us a quick read on buying decisions.  If new merchandise wasn’t moving, we had enough information in just a few days to decide to return merchandise to the supplier or to decide to discount the slow sellers to get the slow moving merchandise out of the way and allow us to bring in merchandise that would sell better.  For us, running sales was worth the complications that they caused.