Most of us know outlet stores where we can buy discounted products, but there are also so-called outlet watches dedicated to the sale of watch products. These shops and businesses with offers and promotions had their heyday a few years ago with everything related to fashion clothing, sports, and sunglasses, but today they are very much in force dedicated exclusively to you being able to buy cheap watches.
There is an interesting publication on this type of store and another on consumer habits, and although it is not specifically focused on the sector, it can help you get an idea of what I am talking about. The study comments on how sales increased by 12.5% in 2012 of this type of store. And the big beneficiaries were brands such as Factory and The Style Outlets in Madrid, Barcelona, and in general in countless provinces of Spain, which indicates that they are very fashionable shops.
Guide to buying watches in outlet
What is a watch outlet?
Watch outlets are stores were discontinued, leftover, and damaged products are sold at a cheaper and cheaper price. They are usually very large stores with a large assortment of products, although there are also smaller stores dedicated to carrying out promotions. The diversity of these types of stores is quite wide.
Types of watches outlet
There are a good handful of different types of outlets depending on what things you want to buy. But since we are on a watchmaking blog, we are going to focus on the ones that interest us the most, the watch outlets, which can be classified as follows:
* Outlet of watches in shopping centers: these types of cheap stores are focused on centers with many shops. Unfortunately, it is quite rare to find clocks in shopping center outlets. These are usually focused on the textile, clothing, accessories, and even small decoration product sector. If you are lucky they may put one close to home with what interests you the most.
* Multibrand watch and jewelry outlet: large stores that sell discontinued products. They usually function as a center of what has not come out throughout the year. They gather the surplus stock and, in a single space, they put it up for sale. You can find everything that you have seen during the past season and years, and that of course has not been sold. An example is the Corte Inglés Opportunity Center, and also the fashion brands that design accessories for their collections. If you come across a multi-brand watchmaking outlet you can find everything. Sometimes even pleasant surprises. Here they are usually low-end fashion watches.
* Outlet of watches at low prices: these are the stores that are very fashionable and that exclusively bet on taking out all the past collections. If you are not one of the people who is dying to wear the latest Lefties, Sfera, Mango, Blanco, etc., you can find things very, very discounted. Obviously, these brands treat watches as accessory products. Finding Swiss or automatic watches here is a miracle.
* Showrooms outlets: instead of offering the products in stores all year round, it is done for a few days. Small stores without as much capacity as large brands sometimes need to get rid of their stock, it is then when they organize a temporary outlet or showroom to sell certain products. If you manage to find out in the time it can be a real opportunity since we are talking about upper-middle-range watchmaking. Expensive items that for different reasons need to get out of the way. The downside of this type of watch outlet is to find out in time. You have to move around the stores a lot to be informed. A little trick is to sign up on social networks like Facebook or Google +. If you register on the page of the store that you like, it is most likely that they will notify you when they make one.
* Watches with tare in Outlets: The first outlet with defects in Madrid was for clothing and sold products that had a manufacturing defect. The prices were very good but you had to be careful where the flaw was. The advantage is that sometimes it is something so insignificant that it does not affect the rest of the product. If you can see watches in an outlet with a tare make sure everything works correctly. For expensive models, it is normal to change the defective part instead of offering the entire product. So it’s easy for the watches to be low-end. The cost of the repair as well as the time and labor of sending it many times makes it not worth it to return the products to technical service. On eBay sometimes you find a store that can be similar.
* Guess outlet watches: this men’s and women’s clothing brand has a special section dedicated to selling discontinued products at a good price. Like other brands, guess.EU offers discounted discontinued items in the Guess watch outlet.
* Outlet watches for men and women: in the sector in which we operate, gender is indistinct. In other sales channels, there are stores focused on men or women. In the watch outlets, you can find a variety for both sexes indistinctly. What is important is the surplus of stock and since it is a relatively small product it does not make sense to create separate spaces with men’s and women’s watches.
* Outlet of watches in Madrid: in the capital you can find a few places where they are exclusively dedicated to selling discontinued products. An example of a watch outlet in Madrid is Las Rozas Village, small shops on Jorge Juan Street and in some shopping centers in the towns around the capital.
* Outlet watches online: these are the ones with the most demand in recent years. They grow like foam but also disappear just as quickly. Given the demand that there is to find cheap watches. It’s easy to find new stores focused only on offering items at a good price. This type of online watch outlet is based on the philosophy of traditional low-price stores, only that they work online and you must buy the products guided by the images and characteristics. The downside is that you can’t touch the product, feel it and see how it looks. If you have a watch, you already know how important it is to feel the vibrations it transmits when you go to buy it. If you decide to purchase an online watch outlet, confirm that it is a totally new product and without defects, and that you can return it without complications. If it has a defect such as a small scratch, scratch, or bump, ask for images and a guarantee that covers the rest of the pieces without damage.
Disadvantages of watch outlets
The basics to make a good purchase of watches in outlet
There are some fundamental rules so that the money grows more when you buy watches in outlets and any type of these establishments. It is not essential to follow them all but they help greatly to achieve more efficient purchases.
How to save money buying watches in outlets?
The best thing is to be aware of your favorite watch outlet so that you can look at the price variation or the arrival of new material. A good option is to subscribe to the newsletter or take a tour of the store every week. The longer they take to sell a product, the easier it is for you to find it at a bargain price, although if you wait you run the risk that someone else will buy it before you.
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