FashBlog.com

by Christina VanGinkel

Sidewalk sales use to be a big event in the town where I grew up. Put on one day a year, the planning for that one day began weeks beforehand. You would see sales associates sorting through the racks, pulling out items of clothing and other assorted accessories and house wares to be placed into the sidewalk sale offerings. Our downtown would take on an almost carnival like feel the actual day of the big event, with popcorn stand and cotton candy for sale outside one of the stores, and the local diner offering several street corner specials. Other neighboring towns would run their sidewalk sales all around the same time, and if I were lucky, my mother would take me to not only our own town's sale, but also at least one other town's sale. As we often purchased at least one or two items for the upcoming school year at this annual event, two sales were always better than one!

Now, many stores will offer sidewalk sale savings throughout the year. Some do pull racks of discounted clothes outside, or to the front of their store, others just put signs above the racks that are offering sale items, proclaiming them sidewalk sale racks. The savings are sometimes good, even more than good. Our local JC Penney's has several sidewalk sale events throughout the year where they fill the halls of the mall where they are located, not only in front of their store, but down a complete hallway, effectively taking over a large portion of the entrance to both their own store and several others. The deals are great, and their prices are hard to beat. Yet the atmosphere surrounding the true beginnings of sidewalk sales is missing.

My twelve year old was with me recently when I happened upon one such event at the local mall. Even though we live in a relatively small area, I had heard no advertising for the sale. When I mentioned this to a sales person, she replied that it had not been advertised, at least not outside of the mall itself. As it was just a last minute thing their manager decided to promote, signs had been hung on the mall's windows and doors, but that was it. As I had not been to the mall all week, that explained my not being aware of the sale.

My son was at first interested, then after browsing a bit, stated that it was just a sale, nothing spectacular. No, he is not a big shopper, but neither was I when I was twelve. Yet the sales back then did excite me. The ones today are what he proclaimed them to be, just a few more sale racks. Maybe the retailers should take note of the fact that even when consumers are shopping, when prices are discounted to rock bottom, a little bit of fun and frivolity can go a long way towards not only getting the shoppers into their stores, but keeping them their long enough to purchase something. My son had me out of that mall faster than I could ask how long the event was lasting. A little stand selling hot dogs would have made him happy and left me to time to spend!