Anyone who’s ever been on a road trip knows that, just as surely as you see the signs for roadside oddities and cheap gas, as soon as you get a few miles out of any major city you’ll start seeing signs for outlet malls. Tons of bargains! High-quality designer merchandise at a low price! For many shoppers, this siren song is too irresistible to avoid, and they simply must stop to shop. In 2001, Consumer Reports found that about fifty-five million Americans visit an outlet mall each year, and many of them even drive two hundred miles or more to get there.
All that for a Bass shoe store and some Maidenform panties? Outlet malls have exploded in popularity in recent years, becoming one of the fastest-growing segments of American retail. But beneath all the fancy sparkle and fresh spackle of the countless outlets popping up all over the country, do they really deliver all they promise? It turns out that outlets have a few sneaky ways of tricking us into thinking we’re getting a much better deal than we actually are.
Trick #1: The Merchandise Isn’t What You Think It Is
The original outlet and factory stores sold overstocked, discontinued items, and imperfect merchandise unfit for retail sale; that’s what made the prices so cheap. But nowadays, there are as many Gap factory stores as there are real Gap retail stores—how could they have that much extra or have so many irregular T-shirts on hand?
Some outlet stores still sell overruns and irregulars, and many more sell out-of-date items from seasons past, but the truth is that the majority of common outlet stores supplement their stock with merchandise created especially for outlet-store sale. These lines carry the brand name, but they’re made with lower-quality fabrics and cheaper construction techniques. The companies depend on customers’ inability to tell the difference between the quality of real designer merchandise and the lower-quality knockoffs carrying the same label. The knockoffs may be cheap, but that cheapness comes at the expense of quality.
Some outlet stores confuse the matter even further by interspersing regular retail products in with the knockoffs and overruns. These products are rarely marked down from the normal retail price, but due to their proximity to discounted items, customers tend to think that they must be a bargain, too.
