h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well I don't know whether end-of-season sales (winter sale and summer sale) are also customary in other countries than Germany, so I'll explain the basic idea of this: every year in end of february and july respectively, clothing and other articles are sold at a lower price. This is to get rid of this season's goods and to make room for new articles.

Since the sales are on fixed dates provided by the government and discount sales are not allowed otherwise (hey, this is Germany), there are usually huge crowds in front of the big department stores and you better take a baseball stick with you if you want to seek the challenge. Another drawback is that often not the regular articles are on sale, but really cheap ones solely produced for the sale which are not worth their admittedly low price.

So, how to save money on this? Here are my tips:
- Have a close look at the articles on sale - are they worth their price on the long term? I consider it better to spend double the money on articles you could use years instead of months.
- Go to the department stores one or two weeks before the official sale begins - there are always discounts on quality articles as well as on brand names. Once I got three quality business shirts for the price of one. Of course, there are no advertisements for this inofficial sale, as this would be sort of 'semi-legal' in Germany and the department store could be sued by its competitors. (As a side note: Life-long guarantees for goods, Mag-Lite torches come to mind, are also not legal in Germany for competitional reasons. So much to customer orientation.)
- You may be astonished, but end-of-season sales are not restricted on clothing. Carpets, curtains and other things for dressing up your home are also on sale; end-of-season sales only seem to be restricted on textile articles.