I guess “Huge Sale” doesn’t bring down the house anymore
September 3rd, 2009 | by mbhunter |This weekend I saw a sign for a very important-sounding event:
Remerchandising Relinquishment!
It was on a sign for a store sale. I was curious what the heck this means so I did a Google search for it. Only 186 hits came up (which is pretty paltry considering Google indexes 17.1 jillion pages) so I searched on remerchandising. The search turned up this helpful answer; it’s a retailing term for “freshening up the store layout” to highlight seasonal or special items, rouse hapless shoppers out of their walking slumber, and, of course, encourage them to buy more.
Relinquishment isn’t anything more cryptic than its standard meaning: the process of ceasing ownership. Their stuff gets transferred elsewhere.
So, from all I can see, a remerchandising relinquishment translates thusly: “Rather than move this heavy piece of furniture halfway across this huge warehouse, we’d love to have you pay us for the privilege of moving this heavy piece of furniture into your truck.”
That’s the best case. In worse cases, it could be a red flag for a bargain flim-flam: jacking up previous prices just to discount them and give the appearance of a bargain.
Just like going out of business sales aren’t always great, sales with fancy names don’t necessarily give fancier discounts.
2 Responses to “I guess “Huge Sale” doesn’t bring down the house anymore”
By Rae on Sep 4, 2009 | Reply
Funny that you mention the worst case. A local furniture store had a Remerchandising Relinquishment sale a while back, and the state attny. general prosecuted for just that. The store tried to claim that they hired some firm to control the sale and “didn’t know nuthin’ about it”, but ended up being forced to close. Although, not two months later the owners had a differently-named but same old crap furniture store up-and-running at the same location.
By Can Can (Mom Most Traveled) on Sep 6, 2009 | Reply
I kind of wondered what that meant myself!
They won’t fool me