Was in there for warm socks when I noticed sleeping bags on offer…

They promise if you find the item online cheaper, they’ll not only match it but reduce it by a further 10% off the online/cheapest price you can find

Good eh?

So my Vango sleeping bag, 4 Season rating, cost £45 (from an RRP of £70)

Through a combination of large supplier discounts, charging for their discount card, and using their price beating scheme as a short term loss leader. Eventually local competitors either change their product range to offer different ranges to Go outdoors, or disappear.

In the longer term I expect GO will have mainly own brand ranges with only a handful of alternatives from other brands more akin to Decathlon. In the short-term, it means some fantastic bargains can be had.

They make them for less than you could imagine,(see any branch of TK Maxx for details). I work in an outdoor shop and the stuff we sell is amazing now. I would guess GO got those bags from Vango for about £12-18 trade. They(being a chain store operation)buy big numbers to get big discounts. Our shop is an indy but competitive. You bought a great bag BTW. Did you get warm socks too?…. . I want to sleep tonight and this will keep me awake,not knowing!. 😉

Well, it amazes me how some of this ‘outdoor’ stuff sells for so much money

Point in fact – ‘puffer jackets’ like Ram down jackets selling for £150 and more. I mean really, how much do these cost to Chinese produce??

If you can get clever marketing behind you, you can sell snow to an eskimo

Having said that, a smartphone can be very useful whilst in store for reviews and online pricing. The Vango Latitude 400 bag I bought looked every bit as good as the Ram whatever priced at £250

Socks – yeah, got some North Wave Merino wool 4 Season Walking Socks. XL. Nice and stretchy, warm and look very well made – can hardly think I will be using them for biking now 🙂

Also picked up 2 pairs of Go’s ‘Heat Trap Socks’ which I haven’t tried yet

Down is a pretty labour intensive product. Especially if it’s european down. Even the Chinese methods are pretty hard work.

Vango is an anagram of govan in Glasgow, where the company is based.

For your next outdoors-themed pub quiz.

Point in fact – ‘puffer jackets’ like Ram down jackets selling for £150 and more. I mean really, how much do these cost to Chinese produce??

As a customer when purchasing items like that as ridiculous as it sounds, people like to spend a bit more to know they are getting a quality product & decent back up. Obviously this isn’t always the case, would be interesting to see what would happen if someone bought a product like that to market significantly cheaper & of a decent quality.

However the manufacturers view would be if we can get x for this, as that what everyone else sells them for why wouldn’t they?

Most cycle chains also price match, they hope that by price matching youll spend your cash in their shop and return to buy more,

OK the down ones might be more labour intensive, but how about the ploy ones? They aren’t I’m guessing, but can be similar money

What actually happens is that if you do find it cheaper online, they simply refuse to sell you the item as has happened to me twice now. Sneaky but effective.

I’ve never been refused the price match. It does need to be an exact match and include postage.

Brands like Alpkit have done exactly that, using reasonably good down for a good price. They manage to do this by reducing the chain.

There are a whole lot of costs in the whole process. If an item retails at 120, vat will be 20, trade price around 60 leaving around 40 for the shop. Any discount they give is taken out of this profit (ie they don’t get any further discount from the supplier). In other words, if they offer 20% discount (24 pounds) their profit is then only 16 pounds. (Well, not quite as Vat will also change, but you get the drift)

If made in China, clothing will have import costs and duties ( totalling perhaps 20%) so product is now down to about 40.

Down is pretty expensive, and making jackets is a relatively complex pattern (lots of baffles to hold down in place), plus the company making the jacket needs to pay workers and make some money.

I know kit seems expensive sometimes, but there’s very few people in the industry getting rich. There are a few exceptions of course!

Whereas Cotswold will price match a nice comfortable £200 pair of size 10 Meindl boots with the one pair of the same boot in a size 15 that GoOutdoors were trying and evidently failing to shift for £100 🙂

Go have pricematched on the two ossasions I’ve been in recently

In fact, 1st time assistant went over to internet and found an even cheaper price – can’t fault that can you?

After my “lightweight insulation” thread on Friday I went in to try on a Montane Prism. Yup – they pricematched the cheapest online price I could find (had to be identical size & colour), plus an additional 10%.

I’ve also had really good, knowledgeable, service from the staff too, which is the surprising bit as most stack’em high/sell’em cheap places seem to skimp in this area.

Lastly – they’re donating a lot of cash to help a local trail project come to fruition – the Lady Canning crowd funded trails on the W of Sheffield. So pretty good all round!

Its a clever game of bate and catch

Loads of stuff at fairly normal prices. Own brand stuff most be quite hi profit. Some real bargains to keep us intrested. I think that they rely on most people not walking round with their phone out. i didn’t see antone else price checking

Nearly got them to price a 56% discount yesterday for a synthetic insulated vest but the colour was different. Sport Pursuit it is then. At least I know the size now

Yes I like the blue 😀

They’ve always price matched for me as well. They do that trick all shops do, where they price something really high for a while then reduce the price at a later date citing a massive discount which is probably all it’s worth.

They often do it with Mike Ashley’s Karrimor brand. 👿

Bonesetter in being a tightarse shocker. 😆

Evening Nige. 🙂

Evening Stu

Old habits die hard 🙂

plus how many buy the dicount card and dont buy anything or just something for the going price,
surprised one hasent opened up in cumbria yet ,

I’m amazed by how few folks use the price match. They write it in a folder and a quick glance last time revealed two names between that days purchase and my one from 2 months previously. Of course it’s possible there’s more than one folder but still…

Penrith is in Cumbria if I,m not mistaken!

I’ve used the price match 3 or 4 times.

Do GoOutdoors do Rapha Stu?

Bad as me Stu already already 🙂

I use the price match for chains especially.

Almost.
But not quite.
You’d never get as fat as me being as tight as you are. 😕
Rich.
Rapha is so 2012. 😆

GO were spot on with me, I was looking for a Downy jacket & after asking on here narrowed it down, showed interest in a RAB Microlight which was £160 (?) in GO. The assistant says ‘so & so are cheaper but you need to show us that you’ve seen that so we can match it’, so I did. They matched it then knocked my card discount off, ended up getting it for £130 ish. That was in October I think. I’ve never bee cold since.