Monsoon Sales – An Overview

All the better for us, the common folks who get strung around and all tossed up by the budget, we get to buy, choosing from different stores, a large variety of goods at almost half their price.

The shops in lanes and bylanes of Laxmi Road are advertising their sales and each shop has something worth looking at. A mela kind of atmosphere hangs around, the crowd happily entering the two storey or three storey showrooms.

People and more people are around the counters, busy sales-people desperately trying to attend to all queries and show all the goods being asked for. The security men standing tall ensure that no hanky-panky goes on and the cashier, with his head bent down either on writing out a bill or counting notes, barely has a second to look up.

Crowds milling around, a constant humming sound of conversation, queries at changing rooms with people hugging to themselves, all they would like to possess.

Yet so many go back disappointed as their size in a particular pair of trousers is not available, so they trudge on to the next store, where all this melee goes on again, a never ending circle.

Shirts of Louis Phillips, Van Heusen, Arrow, jeans of Flying machine, Zodiac, Killer, Newport, Lee, T-shirts, suiting and shirting material, khadi silks, cottons, sarees, silk, Punjabi suits, readymades for men, women and children, there is an overwhelming display of the choicest of articles on Laxmi Road, M.G. Road and Dhole Patil Road.

Apart from the shop owners offering sales there are the direct factory sales like the Jordache, Levi, Arrow. And then the government sponsored, government aided and different states holding exhibitions cum sales of the handloom and handicraft items.

It is not as if the Pune public cannot afford the items at the actual price but the lure of saving some will draw the most intrepid of shoppers. Secondly the shop owners sell off stock to make way for the new items which they can put up for sale during the season time though ofcourse not at a discount. Thus to bargain for a summer dress in the rains or a cheery sweater helps one possess what they wanted at an affordable price.

Many people believe the sales are a way of looting and fooling the public. They believe that the rate is first hiked up and then discounted. Let us see it like this. Most shops wish to build up a regular clientele and to cheat a customer is to loose ten customers thus most reputed showrooms would not stoop so low as one year if they do make such sales the next year no one will go there to be cheated. Of course there could be certain shops indulging in this but one can definitely not buy from them as buying is a deal between the buyer and seller, nobody on either side is forced to do something. If the deal is agreeable to both it goes through. However, here a few tips on how to avoid being cheated.

As and when you have the time check out a few shops for what you want to buy – inquire the rate during regular days. Thus if the sale is genuine you will know it for sure.

Branded items generally have a fixed rate. It is the local or other items that could fluctuate in price. Try to get a feel of cloth thus no one can pass off a cheaper silk as a more expensive one.

As for counters with “upto 50 per cent” discount, inquire before your eart is set on an item what the discounts are!

And finally if you have the money to spend and you obtain pleasure from buying what you want don’t let anything stop you!