The Hunt for Red Tag October

Last week, I was assigned my hit list. A friend of mine is aware I’ve honed my internet bargain finding skills and enjoy the hunt. It has the adventure and challenge of a safari. “Mjumba, quick! Hand me my platinum card.”

With the first signs of a season change, she made up an outdoor apparel shopping list and gave it to me. I’ve tried to simply impart the principles so she can seek for herself, but that has no appeal to her. She says she knows I enjoy it, so I’m welcome to do it for her. Right.

One of the underpinnings of the strategy is to be flexible about color, size, etc. I can go up a size and either use it for layering or just not care if it’s a little baggy. Not so with her. She wants what she wants and it had better complement her eyes and fit her form perfectly.

What I’m looking for is discontinued products or versions where there have been subtle changes from year to year, making the previous ones obsolete. The obvious sources are the large scale liquidators or the manufacturers. But, they usually have sizes at the extremes or colors that totally bombed.

I start there anyway. It may work in her favor since she runs to the petite sizes. No luck.

Item number one will be a test. It’s one of those items that’s almost achieved cult status and the maker and retailers charge accordingly. In this case, it’s a prestige marque and I agree with her that, at $150, it’s overpriced. I’ve spent some time in factories of the Pacific Rim and have seen too many assembly lines with price brands being produced along side of the cachet names. For the most part, they buy their components from the same suppliers and have them assembled the same places.

But, pricing is based on demand, not cost. Demand is high for this item and it’s unlikely to land with liquidators, at least not in any volume. And, the big retailers, who pop up in your search engines, aren’t going to be discounting it.

The strategy here is to unearth the smaller merchants who were force-fed large orders and need to turn the leftovers into operating capital. I’ve spent some time compiling a list of them and find what I’m looking for discounted to under a hundred. Score one for the home team.

I need the victory because the second target will be even harder. It’s private-branded by a catalog retailer and will not be showing up on the pages of many, if any, retail sites, except theirs. So, it’s off to the auction sites.

The initial search surfaces the anticipated. That is, the product is available, but at the full price of $250. It is another hot item and no one is budging because they’re getting the price. The price is ludicrous. There are less expensive competitive alternatives, but they haven’t managed to differentiate themselves like this. But, she wants what she wants.

I do the auction search again, this time with spelling variations. Some sellers misspell and the products don’t come up on searches, reducing the competition. This effort locates a candidate with a starting price of $5. I put it on my watch list. It’s listed as used, but the seller explains that’s only because it lacks tags. I’ll roll the dice on that one. It’s last year’s model, but the difference is only in the design of the pockets.

At a couple minutes before the end of the auction, there is only one bid. I wait for the seconds to tick down and submit my bid. I am surprised to snag it for $16.02. Luck smiles upon her.

I wonder if she’s needling me on the last one. It’s one of my Moby Dicks. We had seen the mens version in a shop a couple years ago and I’ve been playing Ahab since it was discontinued, without any success. I ask her about it and she says it piqued her interest when we had seen it and I extolled its virtues.

Since I’ve been hunting it for some time, I already have a good idea about the kill zone and revisit the sites that were barren for me. Sure enough, there’s her size and color at half price.

But, there’s also a reward in it for my good deed. They also have mine.

Good things come to those who wait. And, those who don’t give up.