It’s been a pretty good week for billionaire, Philip Green. Not only was the chairman of Arcadia (the retail umbrella group that includes high-street chains Topshop, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Miss Selfridge, Wallis, BHS) ranked 21st in this weekend’s Rich List of British billionaires (with a casual fortune of £3.88bn), but it was also reported yesterday that he has invested in a 25 per cent stake of MySale. A hugely successful Aussie ‘flash’ sales platform set up by British entrepeneur Jamie Jackson in 2007, MySale has 10 million members in Australia and Asia, to whom it offers up to 80 per cent off deals on designer clothing brands, through limited edition online sales.
In case you haven’t heard of online flash sales before, they’ve been going for quite a while. The concept behind these members-only sites (which foster a notion of exclusivity) is that the limited time period in which you can buy an item – for example, 48 hours – forces consumers to make an immediate, adrenaline-fuelled purchase; and also makes them feel like they’re grabbing a bargain.
Flash sales have taken their fair share of flack, though. Refinery29 recently suggested that the age of the flash sale was over, now that people are over the worst of their ‘recessionista’ tendencies.
That said, given that Philip Green has made his first major investment in 14 years (since Arcadia) with MySale – many of whose brands we don’t recognise, if we are totally honest – it seems very unlikely that the concept is over. While you bate your breath until June, when MySale launches in the UK, here are some more flash sale sites worth a gander in the meantime.
It calls itself a ‘luxury homeware’ site, but it’s also just a really good price to get, say, a nice lamp or a decent mattress for Matalan prices (though the delivery period is pretty long, fyi.) Promotions – as they call them – last for just 48 hours and they host several sales at a time. Hushhush.com is another slightly less glitzy example of a lifestyle flash sale site, featuring dozens of daily sales with everything from headphones to hoovers.
The US site is essentially a catwalk trunk show. You can ‘preo’ – short for pre-order – pieces from the catwalk, shopping the collection before it has even been produced. Recent examples include the emoji collaboration between Del Toro and Edie Parker. You’re talking bigtime luxury here, though – so possibly not your ideal destination for a hungover impulse splurge.
This high-street fashion flash sales site has an eclectic mix of labels (ie not all will be up your, er, alley), but if you fancy some discounted RayBans, or a new YSL tote (among other luggage labels), we suggest you get in there sharpish. The RayBan sale ends 15 May and the bags end 13 May.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.