The timing of sales in France is decided by the Government. In France there are only two legal sale periods each lasting a maximum of 6 weeks; winter sales (soldes d'hiver) in January and summer sales (Soldes d'été) in July.
Since 2009 however, there is now a third, floating sale period. Shops can have these when they choose and they must run for two consecutive weeks. Bargains of over 50% can be found in abundance. There is usually a nationwide start and then each department sets its own end date after a local government consultation with retail companies.
The logic behind having set sale times nationwide is that shops should not be allowed to "buy in" goods for sales, but that goods in a sale must be genuinely reduced items.
Today is the first day of the winter sales here in France. As I was expecting it to snow, I didn't make any plans to go out to town for the sales. The meteo was wrong tho' as today turned out to be nice sunny weather.
However, my decision not to go into town for the first day of sale turned out to be the right one. My MIL tells me there are too many people looking for bargains.
At the 1 pm news, the news report showed hordes of people waiting outside Zara stores this morning. At another big shopping mall, the crowd got impatient waiting for the metal shutter to open and people were actually crawling underneath the shutters to get into the mall and running as fast as they can to grab the products in the shops!
It seems that the winter sales here are not confined to just clothes and accessories but also to groceries and electricals, almost everything is on sale from 30% to 75% off! Some hypermarkets are advertising buy 1 product, you get another same product for free.
I am tempted to drive to Pau for a day of shopping tho, it would be so nice to be able to spend the whole entire day out in the shops with some girlies sans husband and baby.....
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