Beat the rush for summer savings

Signs,such as the one above, are covering storefront windows all across the PACA region. © OliBac

Bright red signs flash across every shop window in the Nice’s commercial shopping district. And the signs are not advertising reductions up to 50 per cent off the original price but rather reductions starting at 50 percent off. This will come as a happy surprise to shoppers, who are used to the sales starting slowly, with reductions of between 10 and 30 per cent, and prices getting increasingly slashed towards the last few days. However, competition arising from the late-start of the sale period in the PACA region this year has forced massive discounts from day one.

Carol Experton, a Niçois who runs MG3—a clothing store located on Rue Pastorelli—said that reductions are bigger this time in order to draw in more customers. Retailers on the Côte d’Azur have started this particular sales period two weeks after the rest of France, and one week after Monaco, which has made it more difficult to attract customers to shop in the area, she explained.

"People aren’t buying, so we have to increase the discounts to get them in," Experton said.

Although smaller stores may be struggling, it certainly doesn’t look as if shoppers have been put off from buying bargains in general and big name stores such as Mango, Zara, Pimkie, and Mao are currently packed with people eager to take advantage of the reduced price tags.

Nathalie Miraval