All of your aspirational yuppie mall brands like Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma and Coach (which used to be legitimately fancy, years ago, before they decided to start selling loudly branded handbags to Bethesdan tweens) are having to lower prices permanently because nobody has money anymore and they don’t want to get people used to insane 75% off sales all the time.
Back in December, retailers had to cut prices like crazy just to get inventory off their shelves. They were literally (figuratively) giving shit away for free (a very steep discount)! But that’s no way to run a business forever, and so retailers are now just adjusting their prices downward in the hopes that this will be a slightly more successful strategy for the long term. Now instead of paying a millionty dollars for a Pottery Barn couch, you can pay .7 millionty dollars for a Pottery Barn couch, any day of the week. And then you can live under it for just a fraction of what you’d pay to live in a house!
Prices Fall To Match A New Frugality [Washington Post]











And here I was thinking we could solve our impending trillion-dollar deficits with a 500% tax hike on melon-ballers.
Boxes out in the back alley are still cheaper.
I’ll never understand why a pair of jeans should ever cost $100 or more. Or why people buy them.
Wow, thanks SKS. I’m glad I read this post at a time when I need new and more upscale furnishings for my laminated refrigerator box.
High time. Who shops at these places, anyway? Not Wonkette commenters, I’ll wager. Also, ‘recession-era’ is a funny phrase. How long until it’s an ‘era’?
TGY, Est Era Humanum.
ManchuCandidate: You can afford lamination?
TGY: So true, I do all my shopping at Beans, Boxes and Beyond…
sanantonerose: I’m trading all my jeans for hobo beans.
Deflation ain’t just a sexual act
sanantonerose: Because they make your ass look THAT GOOD.
Bellevue still has the Trust Fund Babies livin large. They have 75$ an hour bowling.
Uh, I don’t wanna alarm anyone, but if if prices are going down shouldn’t it be called a depression?
TGY: I’m trying to figure out why Hayden-Harnett is advertising here. Very lovely handbags with $300+ price tags.
Sara K. Smith: Which is why I never even try them. No use tempting my broke ass.
Bwahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahha.
I mean, oh, how terrible. Wherever will we obtain a $55 soap dispenser?!
Silly Wonkette. Everybody knows Coach has been cold subsidizing those stupid bags with their goat cheese empire. For realz.
http://www.coachfarm.com/
Yay deflation! And just in time for the HDTV turnover, too. A lot of the fast food places around here have been going down, too; lunch is cheaper. Unfortunately the beer and cigarettes have still been going up, even though they are what people most need to deal with a crippling depression.
springfield_meltdown: I had never even heard of that company before, but am not going to complain about the biki-chick ads (that still avoid looking like porn, unlike the old American Apparel Ads).
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Away we go, round and down and round and down the deflationary death spiral!
And Kroger–this is true–has announced they’re donating their rotten food that people won’t eat to the Peoria Zoo. If it works, they’ll donate their rotten food elsewhere in the Rust Belt to zoos.
Soon we’ll have to eat our census takers’ livers with hobo beans and a nice vintage box wine. Slurpslurpslurpslurp!
Why does Pier One have such an allure, when everything is an import these days?
At these prices I can’t afford not to buy!
Sara K. Smith: Some jeans!
Beans, beans, magical beans……
Goes good with Walmart Red.
Say what you will about the prices, but those chocolate croissants from the Williams Sonoma catalogue are delightfully scrumptious.
Good point on Coach bags, they used to be classy and very well-made until they started sprinkling them with fake gold crap and started making them look like hooker/tweens bags.
ManchuCandidate: Laminated! Ooooooohh! How much did that set you back?
Does this indicate a change in gas prices? Get it? Beans? Gas? Classic.
Kingbee: It’s Saran wrap, he just calls it “laminate”.
Hobo beans are the leading cause of choking deaths among hobos between the ages of 1 and 99.
dijetlo: Ha — in other words, just another hobo McMansion!
Fuck that, I love 75% sales. Just bought 5 shirts, a dress and a pair of shoes in Ross that costs me $140 altogether when they should’ve costs me $600 at least. Sales make you feel like a winner!!
Estus Washington Pirkle: I think you’re looking at this all wrong. If people buy new furniture at the lowered rate then they will have to discard the boxes. That means we all get new boxes/housing. Win, win!
sanantonerose: I tried irregular jeans for a while. But I couldn’t live with accidental bell bottoms and crotch stitching that chafed my balls into a fine dust.
That’s right, thanks Levi Store Outlet, i have no balls because of you.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51mzhrXWtwL._SS500_.jpg
BEANS
El Pinche: Well my god man, put on some underwear!
I buy jeans at Melrose and Ross that cost $15 tops and they make my ass look just fine. But then again, being a librarian, I’m not exactly a fashionista.
I moved in Feb. from the third floor to the the first floor, my couch would not fit through my new door, I had to throw it away. I wanted to buy a new one with my tax refund, then I did my taxes and found out that I owe money. Anyway, even if I did have a refund, I wouldn’t buy a PB sofa full price.