Saks 70% off (effectively) sale report

Much like Caroline said before, this sale is madness. It is also utterly confusing. There's signage for publicly available discounts (40%-50%) where you can take it home today, and there's signage for pre-sale items, which you can buy at the discount that will become public on Tuesday, but you can't take it home until Tuesday, and then there's the extra 'secret' discount given only to cardholders, essentially the discount which will become public on Tuesday, (usually an extra 50% off sale merch), but you also then cannot take that home until Tuesday.

I don't know whether all the people there today (NYC Saks) had Saks cards or not, but the basic 40% off seemed to generally be very popular. The entire store looked rather raped and pillaged. All the boutiques had little left (Gucci, Prada, Ferragamo, etc.). Louis Vuitton, which never goes on sale, was empty. The first floor designer bag section was ravaged-- no trace of Valentino or Chloe, only some mishandled Marc Jacobs and Botkier and other brands which are generally a lower price point.

The sale shoe selection is dwindling. The 8th floor looks like someone tied all the shoes up in a hot air balloon and exploded it. Total. Chaos. You can find select Gucci boots, Louboutins, Ferragamos, Choos, Manolos, Pradas, Stuart Weitzman, Taryn Rose, and even a bit of Chanel.

This sale is no joke. I went in today around 2:30 and plucked a black Burberry down coat (coats are on pre-sale for 30-40% off) from a fresh full rack of maybe 7-8 coats. Once I was done looking around and had it bagged and put in the back (maybe around 4:00PM), the entire rack was empty. I located 3 in various places, having been tried on and abandoned, but no more than that. Are you serious? Did the rest get purchased in 2+ hours!? Apparently. So if you want the best selection (and it goes to show stuff gets brought out because yesterday they only had that coat style in ivory), go early.

So how do you read the secret prices if you have a Saks card? There are only select full-priced items, of which you can get 40-50% off, and for all sale items, those ending in $XX.90, cardholders get an another 50% off (a kindly associate in mens explained this to me, as I find it all very confusing). The catch for the cardholder discount is that you can't take anything home until Tuesday (meaning you have to fight through the masses AGAIN to find your sales person to pick up your purchase) or you can pay $15 to have it mailed out.

I hope this helps for anyone who has questions about what this sale is all about. The phones at Saks are ringing off the hook and sales associates are so bombarded with people that I would not bother trying to get a response, unless you called a store in a smaller city.