Thursday, September 20, 2007

Sales Season



Another sales season is arriving upon us in Taiwan this month. The starting date is different for each department store or shopping mall, but the promises are all the same.

If you spend so many thousands of New Taiwan dollars on one brand, you'll get about 10 percent free. There are also the 'exclusive' items only available in limited quantities on certain days, say 5 particular bags of one brand only available on October 9. They're hoping to provoke a talking point, to have you line up at 3 in the morning or hit your fellow consumers in the face so the product can make the 24-hour news channel.

Using certain credit cards can also get you discounts, but you have to watch out, because the right bank is not enough, it also has to be the right color - preferably platinum - and the right card issuer - Visa or MasterCard etc. But whatever you want, a jazzy T-shirt, a bling-bling bag, it has to be somewhere out there. Happy shopping!

The pages above are from the Breeze Center's latest publication. That's also a fixed element of these sales, a glossy booklet listing all the discounts and exclusive products. As you can just see, you can blow a cool 400,000 NT dollars on a Ralph Lauren crocodile bag, while Yves Saint Laurent dazzles with his ostrich skin bags.

What's different from previous Autumn sales, are the length of the sales period - down from two to just one month - and the amounts of money you have to spend to get something extra - those are higher than before. So when everything from food to taxi fares is getting more expensive, department store sales are no different from the rest.

As to today Thursday September 20, Marks & Spencer opened its second Taipei outlet, taking up the whole third floor at New York New York, and yes, it features exactly the same products as the other one, including the biscuits and wines. Good to see the men's shirts are at least not made in China, but in Mauritius, Morocco, Turkey and so on.

Also opened today a store of the Swiss brand Bally on the first floor at Taipei 101, while Giorgio Armani Cosmetics is putting on a show between those three Mitsukoshi department stores across the road.

1 Comments:

Blogger Esquire H. Jr. a.k.a. balla'-tician on the missions said...

shoppin' season!! can't wait to go to TP101 n' do some silly shopping moves~

12:46 AM  

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