Where I grew up (central Florida), we admittedly joked that it was “the land of outlet malls.” We passed outlet malls driving to the beach, driving on the highway, there were outlet malls seemingly in every town and off every major highway interchange.
So if there were this many all over the place – are they all actually giving me a good deal on clothes or other things? Or is it basically just the same as buying clothes on sale from a standard retailer’s sale section of their store or website?
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Outlet stores generally sell two types of merchandise:
1. Main store merchandise that hasn’t moved and is out of season. You generally have a low selection of sizes/styles/colors, since it’s on close-out. This is where you get “deals” but you actually have to find them
2. Many brands have cheaper production lines that make cheaper merchandise *solely* for the outlet stores (i.e., they were never in the flagship to begin with). They are hoping that the name brand helps them get the sale, and you’re definitely not getting a “deal” – you’re paying a lower price for a lower quality product.
No, they’re not especially good deals. They can be fairly inexpensive, but that’s because the quality tends to be low.
“Premium brands” generally have different, low-quality, lines that they make specifically for outlet stores.
Originally, outlet malls sold excess, out of season, or prior year styles at discounts and were typically located on the outskirts of metro areas, as to not directly compete with or cannibalize stores selling full-priced apparel.
Today though, it’s kind of hit or miss. Like others have said, many retailers now make apparel specifically for sale at outlets that are not the same as you’d find at their standard retail, so the answer it that it really just depends. If the outlet is located in (or in the immediate vicinity) of a major city, it almost certainly is not a “true” outlet.
Yes and no. There’s a couple of things going on. First, outlet malls tend to get outdated stuff that may not have sold during the first run. Just leftover inventory.
But there are also new products that are made for the outlet malls that are made more cheaply. For example, I wear New Balance 574s. I can’t find those at outlets, but I can find 515s, which are a slightly cheaper made version that I can only find in Outlet/discount type stores. You can’t even find them on New Balance’s website.
Originally? Yes. Today? Not so much.
In the fashion world, designers release new designs on a regular cadence. To remain relevant, retailers have to get rid of last year’s designs to make way for this year’s designs. They do this by putting last year’s designs on clearance sales before they have to put this year’s designs on the racks.
But even those big sales don’t clear out all of the inventory of last year’s designs, particularly if certain items weren’t popular. Or maybe the most popular sizes get cleared out, but less popular sizes don’t sell. Or whatever. Additionally the retailers of the clothing only put error-free clothing on the racks. So if a buttonhole is off because of manufacturer error or there’s a scratch in the leather on a jacket or bag, those can’t go on the shelf at the retailer.
Retailers used to just junk all these leftovers or damaged goods that wouldn’t sell. Occasionally these retailers would have outlet stores in out-of-the-way places where budget conscious-shoppers could buy this damaged goods, overstock, or out-of-date designs at a steep discount. Then sometime in the 80’s some smart real estate developers realized that they could build a strip mall, get all of the retailers to put their outlet shops in that strip mall, and market the whole set of retailer outlets to those budget-conscious shoppers.
They took off like wildfire in the 80’s and 90’s … and that’s when things started to go awry.
Because the retailers saw the popularity and demand among budget-conscious shoppers and thought to themselves “Hey, these cheapskates don’t care about the most current style or best quality — I bet there’s money to be made there!” So instead of just offloading the overstock, out-of-date designs, or damaged goods of their top quality *haute couture* lines, these retailers started basically *manufacturing their own knock-offs*.
Want an Armani suit? You used to have two options:
* Go to an Armani store and buy a $5000 Armani suit, constructed by hand in Italy, and custom tailored to you in the Armani store
* Go to an Armani shop in an outlet mall, hope they have a suit in your size, buy that Armani suit off the rack — but still constructed by hand in Italy — for, say, $1000 (because it has a tear in the lining that no one will ever see or stain on the lower left calf), and take it to your own tailor to be fitted.
Nowadays — because designer brands and retailers caught on that budget-consious people want an Armani suit at 20% of the price — you have a third option:
* Go to an Armani shop in an outlet mall, and forget about finding an actual Armani quality suit (because there are, like, 7 of those hidden in some backroom) and instead you can buy an “Armani” suit off the rack for $1000 that has been mass-produced in a factroy in Thailand by the same company that produces the $300 suits at Macy’s (and with the same lower quality fabrics and craft) — but you get to pay $700 extra for it because Armani has slapped an Armani label on it and put it up for sale on the rack in an Armani Outlet Store. ¯_ (ツ)_/¯
That still can vary store by store in an outlet mall — some retailers/brands/designers still sell their overstock / damaged / last-year’s-design work. But nearly all of the stores *also* have cheaper, lower-quality knockoffs of their high fashion offerings that they’ve slapped their brand on for the budget-conscious-but-also-brand-conscious buyer.
(Also, I’m not picking on Armani. I just picked the first high end fashion brand I could think of. I’ve never been in an Armani store or an Armani outlet, and my two suits are from Macy’s and Men’s Warehouse. So who am I to talk? My ex-wife though — she spent a *lot* of our money on absolute garbage at outlet malls because it had a designer logo on it.)
I Live near a world famous (not kidding about the world famous part. They advertise in Europe and China and probably 90% of the business comes from these tourists) outlet mall. The stores used to be true outlets (past season or clothes that were damaged or returned). Now many stores have merchandise that is “made for the outlet”. Probably lesser quality than the stuff that would have come from their stores that did not sell. All a bunch of bs
Imagine if Mercedes let Hyundai use their name and logo to sell cars in an area where Mercedes doesn’t have any dealerships and doesn’t sell cars. Like, idk, El Salvador or Eritrea.
So, you are buying a car that looks like a Mercedes, has a Mercedes logo/badge, and it says Mercedes… but it’s actually a cheaply made piece of junk made by Hyundai and sold to rubes who don’t know better.
That’s what an outlet mall is.
They’re typically out in BFE where land is cheap and taxes are low, and also where the brand doesn’t have their own stores. You get cheaply made crap from some 2nd rate sweatshop that just happens to use the same brand logo, so now, poor country folk can buy “Ralph Lauren” polo shirts (and one of the sleeves is a little shorter than the other, but who really notices that?).
Outlet malls can offer great deals, but it’s important to do your research. Compare prices to other stores and check the quality of the items. Remember, “outlet” doesn’t always equal “bargain.”
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