The Best Time to Holiday Shop: Two Experts Share Their Secrets
‘Tis the season, folks! If you’re like us, you probably have only reached the “planning” stage when it comes to your very long holiday shopping list—perhaps you know who to shop for, and have a vague sense of what to buy, but you haven’t sat down to formulate any sort of legit list yet. Some people might call this “slacking,” but after speaking to the two founders of mega-sales app Hukkster, we’re thinking it might just be called “smart.”
As it turns out, it pays to wait for the best days to shop. And those days, according to Hukkster founders Katie Finnegan and Erica Bell, don’t happen until well after Thanksgiving. Whereas Black Friday used to be an annual event in many households—shoppers got up early, sometimes arriving to stores as early as 5 a.m.—those days are over.
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“During the holidays, inventory is very fleeting,” Finnegan tells StyleCaster. “[Sale] offers are really short-term, and it’s competitive. There’s no such thing as Cyber Monday anymore; the holiday sales typically trigger the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Sales that show up in stores on Black Friday have been online since well before that.”
The sales mavens did a bit of their own independent research and discovered that, last holiday shopping season, the day with the highest discounts was actually November 30, with the average discount climbing as high as almost 32.4% off. December 1 was also a great day to shop, with discounts reaching 32.2% off. If you’re looking for the best day to shop in terms of how many sales are going on, Cyber Monday—the Monday following Thanksgiving—is probably the way to go, with 32.5% of merchandise being offered at less-than-retail price.
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“We found that, this past year, the rate of discount during the holiday season was the same as the rate of discount in April,” Finnegan adds. “No one knows that! It’s really hard to see that.”
To cope with that high number of sales during the holiday shopping season, the Hukkster app will re-launch this Thursday with a new in-store capability, which will allow you to shop brick-and-mortar locations with the same sales savvy as the app provides online. Check out the infographic below to learn more about when to shop holiday sales!
