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Buying luxury items on the Internet, such as fine watches, has no standard timing. Generic advice like “wait for end of season sale” or “check in January” may apply very broadly, but will help with specific cases only minimally. A great moment to purchase a luxury watch is never the same as the optimal moment for buying, say a luxury coat.
The decision of when to buy the product depends upon what you are buying. This guide analyzes timing decisions for different products in the market and tells you when to buy them based on seasonality, calendar, market behavior, etc. By doing so you can achieve much more consistent positive results for your purchase decision.
Fine Watches: Timing Follows Production, Not Fashion
The best time to buy luxury brands online doesn’t follow the same timing as fashion-driven categories. Fine watches are not part of the seasonal collection release cycle – Rolex is a prime example. New models are launched in the same store or different stores given the distributor. When you buy a new model, you put the pricing on a downward pressure on its predecessor that is still new.
It is during January to March that pre-owned luxury watch prices are at their lowest before spring demand takes off.
A void is when you purchase a watch right after a major watch fair announcement. The days right after Geneva Watch Week have always been periods of rising secondary market prices because of strong demand and limited supply. If you hold off your purchase for only 6-8 weeks, the price bubble usually starts to fade and that would be the time when you could get an attractive offer.
Designer Fashion: Two Windows, One Better Than the Other
Fashion is where understanding the best time to buy luxury brands online pays-off quickly. Luxury fashion is the one industry that follows an almost perfectly fixed clearance schedule. Clearance times: 2 times a year, one for winter clothes and the other for summer clothes, winter clearance from late December to early February and summer from late June to end of July.
In fashion luxury winter clearance usually does much better than in summer. The amount of money a brand makes from selling the winter collection, mainly made up of things like coats, scarves, tailored suits, leather goods, is much more than that from selling summer collections. Besides, the quantity of high quality stock sold at clearance in January and February is also much higher compared to summer.
January’s first 14 days represent the biggest volume of sales and deepest discounts during the winter clearance period. Whereas, from the middle of February onwards, the collection narrows quite a bit but the discounts get deeper. Those who look for specific items should come early for shopping, but if they like to discover new stuff, they can just wait.
Fine Jewelry: Avoid Peak Gift Windows, Buy the Week After
Jewelry costs are mainly decided by when people get gifts. For example, during periods like Valentine’s, Mother’s Day and Christmas, as well as other major cultural celebrations, jewelers see an upsurge in demand which results in a price hike and limited stock availability.
The best time to buy a luxury brand online for jewelry is after these peak times of high demand, and one week before the next season. These are the periods when unsold pieces are priced as reductions and authenticated papers are given like to pieces that were sold at original/raised prices during the peak. The week before the holiday season is a great time to buy a discounted piece.
For jewelry, the best weeks to buy luxury online are the first week of February following Mother’s day that is May, and also the first week of January as they are the three weeks with the highest level of sales. If the buyers plan their shopping around these windows instead of shopping randomly during the peak seasons, they consistently pay lower amounts for the same products.
Designer Fragrance: New Launch Periods Are the Wrong Moment
Fragrance launchers usually make use of a promoting schedule concentrated in fall before a Christmas sale. During such times, the promotion budget is substantial while the pricing of the existing authenticated lines is still consistent with full retail positioning.
Buying luxury brands’ fragrances online would be cheapest in spring, March to May, as the promotional period after Christmas has already ended but before any new launching excitement and when the existing authenticated lines are discounted the most. Seems like the buyers who only react to what is happening without planning their purchases with the fragrance seasons are not making full use of this window.
The Principle Behind All of It
The greatest opportunity to buy online luxuries regardless of the category is a buyer’s peak demand coinciding with the seller’s discount cycle – the two of these happening at once. In that case making it a habitual practice instead of a one-off occurrence of these two factors coming together means you should not wait til you want to buy something before you decide when you are going to buy it but rather look for that point through the calendar first and plan your purchase around when that window occurs.
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