How I Found Dress Shirts for $2.56

Clothing shopping is a slightly different animal. There are matters of size, style and all sorts of variables that enter into it. With other stuff I can post about a great deal and you can easily check if it's the right item for you. Clothes aren't that simple, so it becomes more a matter of buying strategies. So let me tell you how I bought several Geoffrey Beene dress shirts about 5 years ago for $2.56 each! First-quality, excellent shirts, nothing cheap about them... except the final price I paid at the register.

Near my office in Philly was a Strawbridge's (since sold to the Macy's parent and many renamed as Macy's). At one time it was one of those grand department stores with a rich history, like Lord & Taylor, Gimbel's, Macy's, Bloomingdales and the like. Over the course of time, I got familiar with the rhythm of their sales promotions -- every few Wednesdays, and often with early-bird specials for the first few hours the store was open. Then to top it off, they would also have coupons for additional savings. And all these offers went hand-in-hand. So I knew that by waiting for one of those Wednesdays, taking an early lunch so I could hit the early bird and using coupons, the savings could be good. One day I was surprised by how good.

This particular day, the regular sale price for selected dress shirts was going to be 40% off the marked price, and during the early-bird time they had upped that to 60% off. I guess they wanted to clear some space for new inventory. The newspaper that day contained a coupon which was an all-day pass for another 20% off. So the antennae went up and went in to play the game.

I went over to the racks where they had the men's dress shirts that were on sale. There were a few brands, and among them were Geoffrey Beenes. I found the racks with my size was and started checking what was available. What I noticed was that many of them had a marked price of $19.99 but there were several lower prices mixed in. So now not only was I looking at the color/pattern of the shirt but started looking to find the price tag. I found a few lower price ones and then came across a Geoffrey Beene cranberry-red shirt with a price tag that had been reduced to $7.99. So this was a great deal in the making. I went over to a register to check out. The salesman rang it up, the discounts were applied, and he did a double-take when he saw the total -- $2.56. He thought it was as funny as I did, asked me for payment and thanked me for shopping there.

But before I left the store, I had to check... were there more like it? Now I had the shirt which had gotten the price, so I could look at the UPC code. The UPC was much more prominent on the plastic bags holding the shirts, so I could look through them more quickly this time. And since UPC codes are what match up to the price at the computer, I knew that if the UPC code was the same, so would the final price. It didn't take terribly long, and I was able to find 4 more shirts with the same code. I took them back to the register, where the salesman rang up the order and came to just over $10! He looked at me with amazement and asked, "where do you find these shirts?" I told him they were just among those in the racks and a little digging really paid off; he was laughing as he handed me my bag. Those of you who know me know I don't whistle very well, but I sure felt like whistling as I left Strawbridge's that day.

I realize it's probably easier for men than women to do these things, since men's styles don't change as radically, and the variety of clothes is less of an issue (I was wearing dress shirts every day to the office then). But I think the strategies still can be applied for anyone: get familiar with the selling rhythm of stores you like and then blend that with some good searching and strategy. And if there are multiple promotions going on, combine them to make the savings bigger. You can sometime parlay that into a great deal in the end!