20% off day at M&S

Well I was driving into work last Thursday and a news segment came on BBC Radio Scotland saying that there was a 20% sale off at Marks & Spencer, hmmm, there are inponderables there already, but I'll skip over them and say that I was mildy excited about the prospect of some retail therapy. Great, I thought I could skip over in my lunchbreak and stock up on opaque tights.

IF ONLY. When I got to the Braehead branch there was a line of cars stretching out the car park near enough to the M8. I managed to park several miles away from the branch and when I got there was faced by the prospect of queues in the clothing areas that would take at least an hour to work through. In front of me there were people with shopping trolleys piled high with jumpers, pyjamas and childrens games.

What does this tell me? That people are insane to put themselves through this sort of panic buying for nothing, that an incredibly simple sales ploy like this can work wonders for M&S who must have sold ten times their normal daily stock on Thursday and that there will be plenty of fluffy slippers under the tree in the Renfrewshire area come Christmas.

I did manage to grab some knickers and a few pairs of tights and paid for them with some sandwiches at one of the much less busy food area tills. I did also strike me that even with the overwhelming demand they still did have stock available in my size and with plenty of choice. Good old M&S

Ulla Popken

Ulla Popken

is a German label who have a couple of High Street stores in the UK in Sailsbury and Walton on Thames. They also have an online presence and mail-order business. Sizes available are generally 16-34 and some trousers are available in a petite length. In terms of pricing and where they are targeting sales I'd say they are somewhere in that elusive gap between cheap and cheerful Evans and pricey and fusty Elvi. Some of the items in the catalogue are covetable with plenty of good jackets, trousers and sweatshirts. Knits are ususally in a cotton/acrylic blend. Not everything is great so you'd have to do a lot of editing, but you could find a good bit of kit from here if you were sick of trawling the high street for wearable clothes. The company also offers a monthly newsletter with special offers and online only collections.