Izod Prices Now Ridiculous
 

I have shopped at Izod at Lake Sumter since I moved here. It was always 50% off the top on all NEW product as it is an Outlet Store. In the last few months I noticed that all new items were 30% or 40% off until they hardly have any sizes left and then they lower the % to 50 or 60 off. I went in last week and all the new merchandise was only 20% off. I can get better prices at the big stores with coupons. I think they assume that the golfers in The Villages have money and they are getting ready for the the high season and people that are on vacation. I am not going in there any longer and neither are my golf friends. I don't mind paying but don't take advantage of us in anticipation of the high season and I also didn't realize that Izod "woman" are only available in their Outlets and only men's is available in bigger stores so all woman fashions are Outlet only as I tried to compare prices at Bealls, Macys etc. and I was told that womans is Outlet only.

If you actually pay attention to marketing and advertising (Shopping at the outlet malls comes to mind), nowhere does it say discount. Outlet simply means a place to sell their goods. That being said, retail pricing credibility disappeared years ago. For example, I believe that when Macy's has a sale going on, the discounts are so deep, the next step would be to pay you to take merchandise home. Nobody pays full price except out of desperation.

There are so many brands of quality golf attire out there, why do you limit yourself to Izod?

Having worked in big box retail for a few years, I came to discover that very little merchandise is ever actually "On Sale". The only time things actually go on sale is when the are being discontinued.

We would have sale items in our weekly flyer. So every Saturday before the flyer came out on Sunday, we would have to go and change all price signs to a "SALE" sign. Usually that meant that the item went from being $19.99 to $19.97. The numbers at the end of the price are actually codes for different categories of pricing. Of course all of those pricing signs had something like "Regular Price, $40.00..You Save $20.03". The truth is that the store never sold one of that item for $40.00. The come to the store from the manufacturer pre priced at whatever the store requests.

As an example, the wholesale price of an item is $10.00. The store requests that the manufacturer labels the item $40.00. The they "mark it down" to $19.99 and almost never sell it below $19.97 or $19.95 until the item gets discontinued. Then they will sell it a $15.00 for a few weeks and then $10.00 for a few weeks. Finally when they have almost none left, they will sell the few remaining pieces to a discount outlet like Marshall's for $3.00 each.

In fact some of these chains have become so big and so powerful that they don't even have to put discontinued items on sale. They send them back to the manufacturer for a full credit and the manufacturer sells them to the discounters for their original cost. So that $10.00 item that they originally sold to the big retailer, cost them $5.00 to make. They sell the remaining small quantity to a discounter for $5.00. Then the discounter sells it for $9.99.

The words "ON SALE" in big box retail simply means change the type of sign.