All About Shanghai www.allaboutsh.com
At the end of every year in Shanghai, especially the new year's eve, there usually would be a lot of promotions in most shopping malls. This year however, it seems the promotions are coming much earlier. Just a few days into December, PCD Stores (巴黎春天), who have four department stores in Shanghai, have started their first wave end of year promotions on third of December. Lots of people went crazy for the promotions, and by just looking at the pictures, it looks almost like madness! All About Shanghai www.allaboutsh.com

   

The promotions were indeed quite attrative. The first hour since the stores were opened it was "70RMB off for every 99 RMB". And the second hour it was "65RMB off for every 99RMB". Pretty good, isn't it? So you can see why people are so crazy about it.
All About Shanghai www.allaboutsh.com

   

What's for sure is that promotions always look better than what they really are. It turned out that "70RMB off for every 99 RMB" and "65RMB off for every 99RMB" don't apply to all the brands in these stores. In fact very few of them had these promotions. The more actual promotions were "55RMB off for every 99 RMB" and "50RMB off for every 99 RMB". Although still very good, customers may find that some of the clothes, shoes, etc that they bought were of the old designs of last year. In other words, stuffs that did not see any buyers in last year.
All About Shanghai www.allaboutsh.com
What's more to this is that the prices, with this and that "off", were still not really good. Most department stores have been doing this trick for a long time. The prices at the tags usually are very high. They don't expect to sell a lot during normal days, but rather sell as much as possible during promotions. It seems that store owners have found this to be very effective. This year, the prices at the tags in most stores seem just crazy. Lots of people found the only thing they actually did while wondering around shopping malls were holding their jaws instead of reaching for their wallets. Now the promotions come early, and people in Shanghai finally got a chance to sweat, wrestle and maybe even fight to get a coat or two, at a decent price. Yes, just decent, not cheap really.