Just like every year, the sales calendar has two clearly marked periods: winter and summer. Winter sales usually kick off in January, and summer sales in July.
And let’s not forget Black Friday, which falls on November 27, right before the Christmas campaign. To learn more about Black Friday, check out this blog post.
For a few years now, retailers have been able to run different discounts throughout every month of the year. The law allows sales periods to be extended whenever they see fit. As a general rule, winter sales start on January 6-7 and end in early March. Summer sales begin on July 1 and end on August 31, or they may even run until late September, depending on the region.
How do I apply the discount during sales?
During sales season, we sell off the stock we couldn’t move during the regular season at a reduced price. The factors to keep in mind during these periods are:
- The stock we put on sale must be the same stock we had during the season. Customers will notice, and anything else projects a less-than-transparent image.
- When we place our wholesale orders at the start of the season, we need to estimate what percentage we expect to sell and what margin we want to make during the sales period.
The rules of sales season
In 2012, the rules of the game changed. Legally, and up until 2012, sales were a discount on the price of items that had been in stock for at least one month, in accordance with Spain’s Law 7/1996 on Retail Trade Regulation (Ley de Ordenación del Comercio Minorista).
From 2012 onwards, a series of deregulating measures were introduced that removed the requirement to keep a product in stock for a month before offering it to the public at a reduced price. So, as regulated by Law 7/1996, Article 25, it is entirely up to the retailer to decide whether or not to run sales periods in their shop. Each retailer freely decides the duration of each period based on their own commercial interest, rather than sticking to the two periods marked before 2012.
To sell products during sales, retailers must meet a series of requirements:
- Offer products at a lower price than before the sales began.
- The items on offer must have previously been for sale in the shop, at least one month beforehand.
- Retailers are required to display both the original price and the sale price (or discount percentage) on the label of every product.
- In accordance with Article 26, it is forbidden to offer products that are damaged or purchased specifically to be sold at a discount. This means retailers are required to offer, during the sales period, products they have carried all year long.
- The start and end dates of the sales must be announced in the shop, in a spot visible to the public, and the period may be neither shorter than one week nor longer than two months.
- During these sales periods, shops may not run any other type of sales promotion in the same establishment.
Returns
- When do I have to refund the money?
If we sell a defective product, the law requires us to refund consumers, since in the consumer-retailer contract we commit to offering products that are neither defective nor damaged. By breaking this rule, the full value of the product must be refunded.
- Return policy during sales
Shops are required to keep the same return policy as the rest of the year. Being sales season doesn’t mean different rules apply. For example, if we have a shop that accepts returns exchanged for store credit vouchers, it must continue to apply the same policy. Returns must be handled under the same terms and conditions as the purchase.
If a product bought outside of sales season is returned to us during sales season, the product’s price was the one at the time of purchase, so it will be a non-discounted price.
- Product warranty: Even during a sales period, the retailer cannot claim a shorter warranty.