The Good-Buy High : For More and More Shoppers, It Takes a Really Deep Discount to Make the Earth Move
In the sport of shopping, the thrill of victory comes in the evidence of a receipt.
Sharon Deal carried gold-medal proof around for years after she transformed a $500 bonus into $1,500 worth of suits and slacks in a single shopping trip to a Macy’s outlet near San Francisco. “That receipt was my trophy. I pulled it out to show it to people. It was better than any Christmas I ever had,” she says.
Bargain shopping can provide a high--some practitioners liken it to an addiction--for relatively little money. It’s the rush of a good find, a chance to beat the system, a way to look like a million bucks without winning the lottery. And it makes the heart beat faster too.
“It’s fabulous. It’s better than sex,” says Joan Weinberg, who has been bargain shopping her way through Los Angeles for the last 14 years. “Every time you put that pair of shoes on--and there’s not all that effort [of sex] involved--there’s a thrill, especially if you’ve paid only $15 for something that two weeks before went for $100.”
Driven by need or desire, more American consumers are scouting the stores for huge markdowns. Nearly 18% of shoppers in a recent poll said it would take a discount of at least 50% to motivate them to buy, says C. Britt Beemer, director of research for America’s Research Group in Charleston, S.C.
“Five years ago, no one said a discount of over 50% off was perceived to be reasonable or potentially viable as a sales discount message. It’s really a reflection of how consumers want bargains,” Beemer says.
In their quest to save, shoppers are demanding bigger sales reductions from department stores and increasingly turning to such discounters as Target or outlet malls, places many of them “wouldn’t have been caught dead in 10 years ago,” he adds.
The lure of a better price and the bragging rights that come with it are increasingly irresistible to many. Elizabeth Mason, proprietor of the Paper Bag Princess, a designer resale and vintage couture store in West Hollywood, speaks for the converted when she says, “Half the fun is saying how little you got it for. I would be a failure if I bought retail. It takes someone savvy to buy bargain and thrift, and no one would ever notice the difference.”
Perry Hart, a musician who lives in West Los Angeles, became a confirmed bargain shopper when his need for nice clothes outpaced his income back when String of Pearls, a jazz vocal group, was formed in 1981. To fit in with the “high-fashion, high-celebrity” crowd the then-23-year-old found himself brushing tuxes with, he turned to vintage clothing stores and clearance racks.
Early on, he wore a 1940s wool flannel double-breasted tux with a pair of high-waisted baggy pants, snagged for $90 from Muskrat, a used clothing store in Santa Monica, to a benefit at Bob Hope’s Toluca Lake home.
“This magazine executive from TV Guide says, ‘It’s an Armani isn’t it?’ I told him the truth. It amused me to no end. My opinion is, ‘Who cares?’ ”
In this day and age, it’s almost conspicuous consumption to spend $5,000 on a garment.
“When I make a purchase for a reasonable price, and it’s within my budget, it’s a very satisfying, adult feeling. It’s doing the right thing,” Hart says. “It’s a self-esteem builder. You think, ‘Oh good, I didn’t just buy the first thing I ran across at the retail price.’ It’s a feeling of being in control.”
Typical of the rest of Hart’s wardrobe is an outfit he pieced together employing used and new sources. A modern Yves Saint Laurent amber and black sport coat was $7 at a Council Thrift Shop, a black cotton dress shirt was half price at the Broadway’s recent closing sale, and linen slacks on a Malibu boutique clearance rack were $20.
Trips to the mall are information-gathering missions--to see what the kids are wearing--before shopping sales or vintage stores. Cotton dress shirts are always picked up during periodic sales at department stores, usually for a third or less of the original $60 cost.
The musician, now 38, who initially just needed to dress for a part, has evolved into a bargain shopper for life. If money fell out of the sky, he “might splurge by buying a Brooks Brothers tuxedo shirt [$75 retail] once in my life, but probably not, because you can get all those things so reasonably.” Instead, he’d spring for the “ultimate class-act men’s suit.”
*
For Deal, marketing manager for Transamerica HomeFirst in San Francisco, bargain hunting began as a way to stretch her one-income budget when she became a single parent 17 years ago. Now it’s more of a lifestyle choice.
“My impulse spending is in experiences,” Deal says. “I cut the corners on material things so I can have experiences. I have a budget to shop so I can have a trip to Europe. It’s not about the things I have, it’s the things I have to remember.”
But she will admit to a certain rush from making a killing on new clothing.
“There’s a psychological element to bargain shopping. There’s nothing more delightful than seeing a sales slip with all of these discounts on it. Recently, I got $80 or $90 dresses for $5. I was high for a week after that,” she says.
Deal stops in at her usual haunt, Nordstrom Rack, weekly and has been known to hide the last outfit in her plus size in the petite section--just until her next paycheck.
“I have a good flair for knowing a style that lives over the years. I have a plaque that says, ‘Every day I thank God for my unique ability to accessorize,’ ” says Deal, 45, who will scrimp on skirts but pay more for showier, long-lasting pieces like jackets.
“When you accept what life is handing you, make it fun,” she says of her bargain hunting rooted in necessity. “I never fail to have fun.”
*
Barbara Hughes’ discount sleuthing is born of necessity too. She has expensive taste, so the Sherman Oaks legal secretary shops “when the spirit moves me,” and it mostly guides her to Loehmann’s or Nordstrom Rack.
“There’s such a markup on clothes. I just can’t afford to pay $400 for a blazer. What I’ll end up doing is finding a nice one for $150,” says Hughes, 56, who usually turns her Saturday forays into a social occasion with a friend. Like most hard-core bargain shoppers, she avoids the outlet malls because she wants to get her hands on the authentic, quality name brands, not “special purchases” like those she happened upon once in a Jones New York outlet.
The theater of shopping--interacting with the clerks, watching what people wear--lures Weinberg to the marketplace. It’s the prices that send her down aisles less traveled, such as Asian boutiques and department stores in the San Gabriel Valley.
“If I know I can get something of quality, and I emphasize ‘quality,’ and I can get it for a discount in price, I don’t see the point of spending more for less,” says Weinberg, who honed her shopping skills while living in Hong Kong.
A summer dress snapped up three years ago for $12 at Kmart “gets compliments all the time. Women stop me and say what a great dress it is,” says Weinberg, 46, a teacher who now has to be more careful than ever with money because of a “mystery virus” that has kept her away from work.
She credits her upbringing with sharpening her shopping ability, along with an eye for good fabric and the inborn ability to accessorize. “It is sort of bred in the bone for New Yorkers to look for bargains,” she says, but she also was instilled with a sense of thrift from an early age, like many bargain shoppers in their 30s to 50s who were raised by Depression-era parents.
An inexpensive sweater is picked up, then upgraded with nice buttons; a blazer is custom-made for $150 because Weinberg will wear it for years. A little black dress that “looks fabulous” was just purchased for $13 at a Chinese department store.
It’s all part of the sport of shopping for Weinberg and others, where camaraderie rules and secrets are rarely kept for long. “I tell everybody,” Weinberg says. “I don’t want anybody to waste hard-earned dollars.”
