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“The
28 day rule allows a trader to claim a reduction on products he
may wish to include in a sale or other promotion. It requires
that the product must have been sold at a higher price for a period
of 28 consecutive days within the previous 6 months in that outlet”
Ref. http://www.dti.gov.uk
So what does this effectively mean when
applied to the kitchen industry?
Whenever new legislation is drafted,
both individuals and organisations look for ways around it. Kitchen
companies in the UK can ‘get around’ this legislation in many
different ways.
The first way is to simply
rotate stock that is ‘on sale’. Imagine that a kitchen company
offers a range of 24 different kitchens in its catalogue. All
the company has to do to constantly have a ‘sale’ is simply continuously
market 20 kitchens out of its 24 as on offer. All they have to
do is to maintain a roster for themselves, which then keeps a
record of which ranges are not on offer.
However,
this effectively means that a kitchen company in the UK can offer
over 83% of its stock as ‘on sale’ all of the time.
What
this does is it takes out 4 kitchens on a rotary basis every month
from the offer. However, if there are 2 similar kitchens in stock,
all the kitchen company does is to ensure that only one is taken
out from the available offer at any one moment of time. Although
this appears to be looking at things back-to-front, from a kitchen
companies point-of-view because of the existing legislation in
the UK it makes more sense to focus on the kitchens that aren’t
on offer.
So
how do kitchen companies make sure that you don’t want the kitchen
that isn’t on offer?
There
are two ways of doing so. One way is to produce a separate ‘sale
catalogue’ every month. All this does is to constantly omit ranges
that aren’t on offer. The second way is for the company to reply
on the dreaded ‘kitchen salesman’.
Companies like to call him a ‘designer’ but in this situation
most people know better. His / her (let’s not be sexist!) job
on this instance is to focus the customer to the ‘benefits’ of
another kitchen door. This will be covered in greater detail later
on in Kitchen Secrets.
By
taking kitchen ranges ‘out of offer’ for four weeks within a six
month period, kitchen companies have found a legal way of having
a constant sale.
However,
this only applies to companies that don’t change their kitchen
ranges that often. There is one more way of ‘beating the system’.Have
you ever heard the phrase, “New season ranges now in stock”?
Obviously there are certain kitchen ranges that remain popular
over the years – certain traditional ranges. Imagine within the
range of 24 kitchens that there are 12 that generally aren’t changed.
These kitchens might involve oak, pine, ‘flat door styles’ etc.,
generally ranges that won’t go out of fashion. So what happens
with the remaining 12?
One
option that kitchen companies might choose could be to change
around 4 ranges every four months. This enables the kitchen company
to tailor their offering according to changing consumer tastes.
All the customer sees is a company keeping up-to-date with trends,
offering kitchen ranges that appeal to a modern marketplace. On
the other hand, a kitchen company can utilise this introduction
of a new range as an opportunity to satisfy the implications of
the ’28 day rule’.
One
way of doing this might be to introduce the new kitchen range
four weeks before it is advertised. If a new kitchen range is
introduced without any advertising and the kitchen isn’t on display
in a showroom, how is the general public supposed to know that
the new range is available? It isn’t. But it is still available
for sale officially at full retail price. Is it a genuine
sale? Perhaps. Probably not. You decide.
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