Holiday retail observations

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As I was navigating through my sale emails on Monday I was struck by one thing. Everything was “on sale” for a limited time. Very limited. Just hours! “Hurry up” was subtlety flashing on the screen. Some had clocks ticking with the number of hours and minutes left. The next day the sales were extended! It was a Christmas miracle! Woo hoo! Retailers exasperate me.

There were a few items I wanted to buy. I waited for Cyber Monday hoping to get a better price. Not really. There were great sales, just not items I wanted. They were the wrong color or a more basic model than I was looking for. I did buy a few things but I’m not convinced that the price was any better than normal sales. Or Fridays.

What’s with putting the crappy colors on sale? There is a lingerie store I like. This fall they introduced two lovely prints. All that was left was an XL. Nothing in my size. However, they had a lot of dull, dingy prints on sale. If you are a retailer, why wouldn’t you make more of your beautiful textiles and a few dingy ones for those earthy people who don’t like color? (I have this vision of the board room where the CEO said “Let’s make 10,000 of those crappy colors and 1,000 of that beautiful print! That will show those customers!”) If I wanted it, I would have had to pay full price as soon as it came out.

Starbucks’ new holiday flavor is juniper latte. I can’t even imagine what that tastes like but it doesn’t sound good. Maybe gin? Or like Christmas greens? I’ll stick to the mocha thank you.

On a very positive note, Tuesday was “giving day.” Many organizations had donors ready to match contributions. PayPal had special deals too for charity organizations. If you give at the holidays, this was the day to do it.

One of these must be a tuna latte!

 

 

61 thoughts on “Holiday retail observations”

  1. Tuna Latte sounds more appealing to me than Juniper Latte 🙂

    I did some cyber shopping on Black Friday – for ME! 🙂 Founds some things I wanted on sale with free shipping + books, cause I can’t resist. A few Christmas presents, too.

    I Agree that the retail ads were annoying “limited time,” “buy now,” “23:42 left to spend!” etc Blah

    Christmas tree is going up today ~ Cheers! 🙂 MJ

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  2. Having owned a retail business in a former life, it’s become much trickier to plan your inventory. Not to defend retailers, but it’s no easy task making sure you get the products you want. No one wants to be ‘stuck’ with inventory at the end of the year and it’s ordered at least 6 months in advance. Manufacturers make it tough to fulfill customers’ need. I saw that Juniper Latte yesterday, the barista said it’s similar to the peppermint. In that case, give me a peppermint mocha and pawn that juniper thing off onto some trendy millennial. Oops, was that my outloud voice? Sorry.

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  3. I didn’t go looking for any sales, but I found one by accident. I think it was the Tuesday after cyber Monday, and I noticed that my turtleneck T-shirt had a big hole in it. So I called Land’s End, and–lucky break–found a 50% off card in my catalog. Did I save money? Of course not. I bought four turtlenecks.

    Giving Tuesday is a good idea. And it’s had a lot of publicity.

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  5. Juniper Latte… just nope. I did have a Lavender White Chocolate Mocha last spring at Joe Muggs (the coffee shop inside Books-a-Million) and it was a very tasty surprise. I did no shopping anywhere after Thanksgiving except for our regular food shopping. Yesterday we ventured out to Bed Bath & Beyond for the Fresh Scent packets that I use in the house. The place had been stripped bare and there were a few peeps shopping. I don’t like to shop and I hit the big delete on all that sale stuff in my inbox. Giving Tuesday was something I didn’t know about until this year and we participated by picking up cat food for a local cat rescue here where we live.

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    • Today I asked about the juniper latte. The barista said it was weird — not bad, not good but weird. Like Christmas trees. Nope. Not for me. I haven’t ventured out to a store since Black Friday. I heard about Giving Tuesday last year but I didn’t remember all the matches that were available this year. I loved it. I usually send a check. This was so much more easy peasy and it was matched. Woo hoo! Good for you. I have 4 cats and know how much food I go through. Can’t even imagine shelters. They must get truckloads.

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  6. Juniper latte – well that doesn’t go over well with me either. It might smell or taste like Pine-Sol. That would not float my boat at all – give me something that tastes good. Sales, sales and more sales – I logged on my e-mail on Monday to see I had 24 e-mails. Craziness!

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      • Pine-sol taste wouldn’t beckon me … it might be like smelling salts to wake up the sleepy Millennials though. 🙂 Funny you mention the Kindle. I’ve never had one before and a fellow blogger did a book review and I said it’s been years since I read a book and I used to be such an avid reader – either on the bus, on my lunch hour at work, or staying up late to finish a chapter, or the rest of a book, and now, with blogging I’ll never catch up with reading til retirement! She suggested getting an audio Kindle to hear books while doing things in the house – I never knew such a concept existed. I knew Audible books used to have tapes or disks that commuters listened to but this is great. I think it will be a birthday present for me next year.

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          • Years ago a co-worker’s Dad was blind and she used to buy from Audible and at that time I thought they were CDs, but more likely cassette tapes. He enjoyed those books. I went onto Amazon after Pam pointed me in this direction and it appears that some Kindles have an audio feature and if you buy the book/download you have to click “audio” when you choose it. I would like to go to Best Buy though to see how a Kindle works Kate. I am clueless and I see from Amazon some have a 7-inch screen so I think I’d opt for that along with the audio. I spend so many hours staring at a screen as it is, the bigger screen if it comes with audio would be great. Apparently you just toggle back and forth from audio to a regular reader. I was impressed!

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            • I just got a new Kindle. I have three. One is very old and I haven’t used in years. The second is four years old and is a Kindle 8.9 HDX. I just bought (last week) the new Kindle 10. I love that they are very easy. It’s not hard to use at all and the selection of books is very good (not sure about audible because I never looked for that). I take them with me to appointments if I have to wait.

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              • Had I known more info about them, I’d have taken advantage of the good sales now, but I’ll wait until next year and go check them out at the store. I have seen a few books online and I know you can download the Kindle app for your computer but it didn’t sound like that was a good option all the time from the reviews, so I’ll get a Kindle and maybe I can get back into reading again. The audio function sounds great. I usually just listen to the news while I am doing things in the house as I don’t have TV – cancelled it nearly a decade ago, but I miss reading. My mom and I had similar tastes and I have three Rubbermaid tubs downstairs with paperbacks in them that she read but I haven’t yet … I hope they don’t have a musty smell when I open the tubs up when I am retired and have some more time.

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  7. Starbucks advertises that their Juniper Latte tastes like “Winter.” I couldn’t help myself. I took the bait and gave it a try. It was much milder than I thought it would be. Your right, it kinda made me think of gin…a very fragrant gin. Although the latte was fine, I returned to my regular coffee on my next visits there. My overall conclusion — just a lot of hype!

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  8. We visited Target on Black Friday forgetting the significance of the day. All we needed were some things from OTC section in the pharmacy area. We almost left when we saw how crowded it was but decided to stay because the checkout lines were moving pretty well. While we were there we took a look at some bigger ticket items we’ve been talking about, but we saw absolutely no deals; all were regular price. I felt like we dodged a bullet. – Marty

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  10. Online shopping for me this year was the year of websites not working. One place I have been ordering from for years suddenly didn’t have any shipping methods for AK. They do ship to AK, but noone let their website know! I wound up having to call the order in to them, which they were fine about but it took a lot more time than it should have. Another place wouldn’t let me check out without logging into my account, but then wouldn’t let me into my account. Still not resolved there. Sigh. So convenient!
    I agree about the juniper latte. Juniper belongs in gin.

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  12. I’m definitely a if-I-want-it-I-buy-it kind of person. It seems to me the only things that really go for a great price are items no one wanted in the first place.
    … and if they want me to hurry-up-time-limited, I probably shouldn’t anyway.

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  13. I tried to find something to buy on Monday at the Cyber sales, but like you the items I wanted in the colors and styles I wanted weren’t on sale. I decided that henceforth I’m going to ignore all Black Friday and Cyber Monday emails/adverts and buy what I want when I want. I’ll purchase fewer things, but I’ll like what I get. 🤷‍♀️

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    • I won’t buy anything just because it’s on sale. I was thinking about a kitchen counter top appliance. The ones that were on sale had very limited capacity. The ones I may have considered weren’t on sale or the sale was weak. I did buy some underwear! 🙂

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  15. My office mate’s out of of office forwards to me. She is on soooo many retail mailing lists. Every morning before Christmas Season started I got soooo much spam from her. But now that the Holidays have started it’s INSANE. On Thanksgiving Day probably 60% of all the emails I got were her spam.

    She doesn’t want to unsubscribe because she actually LIKES getting them. She is interested to see if she can a good coupon or a great deal. ugggh!

    The techie guy at work and I spent 30 minutes one day trying to figure out an email rule that would make her spam email go into trash, but because it all comes from her email, there is nothing that that will consistently work. He was in favor of unsubscribing her ourselves. Which is sneaky and tempting. But I resisted. I want extra brownie points for that.

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  16. Each time I opened my in-box this weekend, I found it overflowing with urgent messages:

    Last chance!
    Midnight tonight is the deadline!

    Help us reach our goal . . .
    Today’s the last day!

    Take advantage of this special offer.
    Give today.

    Only a few hours left.
    Join us before time runs out.

    It’s exhausting. And annoying. And does NOT put me in the Christmas Spirit.

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  17. Sales? I avoid them. However, this Mon. I went for big shoes (for the growing feet) and forgot all about sales. I wound up with great sneakers that were really $55 marked down to $44 but when I checked out they were $27!!! Felt like I won the Lottery.

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  19. Thank you, Kate, for helping DTCC care for the kitties!! And I don’t even pay attention to cyber Monday. Mostly just a day to jump start sales, but I’d have to have a Ph.D. in sales to find good deals I actually wanted. And these days there just aren’t as many “things” I want anyway.

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    • My new Kindle was a black Friday sale and I needed some staples like underwear. How exciting! At this point in life, I’m like you. We mostly give gift cards so I don’t have gifts to buy. I love to support local rescues that I know work hard. There are three here locally (I have at least one cat from each) that do a great job. I feel I know DTCC through you and their facebook page. Giving money is the easy part. Saving animals is hard work. Kudos to you all!

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  21. I was happy to participate in Giving Tuesday, cyber Monday, not so much. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever received as many e-mails as I did over the past weekend and Monday. My delete folder was packed! And we wonder why so many live with astronomical credit card debt.

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    • I always drank black coffee. Dark and hot, that’s how I liked it until that fateful day a coffee truck parked in the lot next to where I worked. Someone convinced me to try a mocha and the rest is history. If I can’t get a Starbucks mocha (and they are not all the same!) I go with black.

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