Sale

Two sales a year: the second week of January and the second week of July, both running a fortnight. The dates go on the shop door in September and they do not move. Nothing is discounted outside them, there has never been a discount code with anybody’s name on it, and the Friday letter has never carried one.

The reason is not principle so much as arithmetic. A shop that discounts continuously has to buy at a price that assumes the discount, which means the piece was never worth what the ticket said. We would rather buy forty pieces that hold their price than four hundred that do not, and the honest consequence of that is a sale that is smaller and duller than everybody would like.

How it works

Thirty per cent, and that is the floor

Nothing goes to fifty, nothing goes to seventy, and nothing gets marked down again in the second week. What does not sell goes to the back rail at full price.

The back rail

Where a piece goes when it is down to two sizes. Full price, all year, and about a third of it eventually sells to somebody who is exactly that size.

Greek makers are not in it

A workshop of three people cannot absorb a markdown and we will not ask them to. Their pieces come off the rail at full price or stay on it.

Alterations still apply

Free in the first year on sale pieces exactly as on anything else. This surprises people every January.

Returns are the same

Thirty days, same terms. A sale piece is not final and we have never understood shops where it is.

What is never discounted

Anything landed in the last six weeks, the Kyoto shoes, and the block-printed scarves — the runs are thirty and there is no surplus to clear.

What happens to what does not sell

We do not destroy unsold stock and we do not sell it on to a clearance channel. What is left after the back rail goes three ways: to the workroom for parts, to two charities in Athens that we have worked with since 2016, or back to the maker if they want it. It is written into our terms with every house on the list and nobody has ever objected.