People go crazy for the January sales, but that item you’ve had your eye on for a long time will probably never be in the sale.
I used to work in a huge department store many years ago and this is how the sales work:

Firstly, most stores have two seasons, Winter and Summer, hence why you have Winter Sales and Summer Sales. It’s an excuse for the retailer to get rid of excess stock to make room and free up the money to buy the next season’s stock.

Stores only put items on sale that are not selling. If they can’t move it, they have to reduce it.

End of line electrical goods, to make room for the newer improved feature rich product, that new Sony TV will NOT be in the sale, the old model that you don’t really want will probably be in the sale, but only because they want to get rid of it to make room for the new one, often the discount will be more the longer the item is on sale, if the store can’t sell it at -10% then towards the end of the sale they might reduce it -30%. The store is desperate to get rid of it (but it’s an old model remember.)

Stores use the sales to get rid of stock that is slightly imperfect or has packaging damage. So when you buy something in a store and get it home then realise you don’t like it anymore and the store refunds it, they can’t sell it as new, as the packaging is damaged etc, these kind of items will go in the sale.

When I worked in that department store we would be paid double money to come in on Boxing Day and clear out the China Department of all the good stock, pack it away and send it back to the warehouse. Then the pallets would turn up with all the sale stock. Slightly damaged stock, slight imperfections, printing errors where the pattern wasn’t quite perfect. All the good stuff was safely packaged away ready to be brought back out once the sales were over.

Same with shoes, all the shoes would be sent to the warehouse and all the imperfect ones would be brought out and thrown on the shelves in a jumble. Stitching errors and badly glued fabrics, look carefully at your bargain shoe, I bet the quality is poor. At the end of the sale, what’s left would be shipped back to the warehouse and the good stock sent back to the store.

All sale stock is “Sold as Seen”, you still have the same statutory rights, but if you’re aware it’s “seconds” or slightly imperfect you can’t return it. The shops normal “good will” to customer returns goes out the window during the sales.
If you buy something in a sale such as that old model new Sony TV, you still have all the same legal rights to a refund/repair as if it wasn’t in the sale. Stores that say NO REFUND on sales items are breaking the law. You can still get a refund if the item is faulty or doesn’t match the description or is not fit for purpose.

The other sales trick, is to put the price up a few weeks before Christmas only to bring it down in the sales. Sounds like a bargain, but it was just as cheap a month or so away.

Stores also package and group items together to make it sound like more of a bargain. Put three lotions and potions in a basket wrapped in cling film and throw it in a end of aisle bin dump and the customers can’t buy enough of them. They wouldn’t dream of buying these items normally.

Lastly the biggest trick for retailers is to have one big discount item that sounds too good to be true. For example a £5000 TV for £599. This item does exist, but only one of them and it’s probably already reserved by the store manager. These kind of items are used in promotional adverts and TV news stories to make the sales sound so amazing, this gets the people queuing over night. But I guarantee you won’t get that big name bargain and guess what, because you’ve queued over night you have to buy something, or you’d have wasted your time, and you’ll believe yourself that you have got lots of bargains, but really, you probably haven’t.

You may get some items at discount in the sale, but probably none of the items, you really wanted or needed, but “we can’t resist a bargain” even if it’s not a genuine one.

Items neatly on a shelf don’t attract our attention. Put a big sale sticker on it and mess them up in a basket and people can’t get enough of them.

Fools and their money are soon parted.