Give the sale its own space, organized by size, without handing it the whole storefront. The full-price collection has to stay visible: it's what keeps the brand alive the rest of the year.
The benchmark
The 2027 winter sales (soldes) should open on Wednesday, January 6 at 8 a.m. and run four weeks, through Tuesday, February 2, based on the rule set by decree: the second Wednesday of January, moved up to the first when the second falls after the 12th.
The official date is confirmed on economie.gouv.fr at the end of the year.
Before the sale opens, check how many sizes are still available for each discounted item, then look at what your sale page does.
At a women's fashion brand the authors work with, almost entirely on mobile, the summer 2026 sale collection received two collection entries out of three, yet opened a product page only three times out of ten, compared with more than four out of ten for collections organized by product type. The most visited page on the site was also the one that lost the most people.
A sale page where half the products are left in only one size mostly drives away people who don't wear that size.
The rule
Make size the way into the sale: the shopper picks theirs, then sees only what they can buy, and no size is preselected by default.
Two cofounders showed us what that setting was costing them:
"Always landing on the small size meant every back-in-stock alert was created on small sizes, so the data was skewed."
During the sales, with broken size runs, the same setting sends your restock alerts to pieces you'll never restock.
The steps
- Official dates and item age. Only products that have been offered for sale and paid for at least one month before the opening can be discounted, which effectively rules out stock reordered for the occasion.
- Selection and reference prices. The strikethrough price is the lowest price from the previous thirty days. With successive markdowns, it stays the price from before the first markdown, as long as you present them as such.
- The dedicated collection. Put the size filter above the grid, and show the remaining sizes on every product tile.
- Markdowns and their dates. Set them in advance, with the wording "from MM/DD to MM/DD, while supplies last."
- The homepage. Keep a spot there for the new collection.
- Emails. Full-price buyers shouldn't get the same message.
A line to say to your leadership before January 6, in your own words:
"We don't open the sales on a page where half the products are left in only one size."
The trap
The trap is announcing the sale first to your most loyal customers. These people buy at full price; a sale email with early access teaches them to wait for January.
A fashion brand that sells through limited launches, or "drops," and that we analyzed, chose another path: one offer a year, reserved for part of its customer base, running eight days across the whole catalog, with no public markdown. "
It's pure loyalty," says its cofounder, meaning a gesture to reward customers, not a way to clear stock.
Its loyal customers get an annual date to look forward to, and prices don't move the rest of the year. This approach requires a permanent catalog and margins that allow it.
January can also be a full-price month: at a premium women's fashion brand we audited, it accounts for 12% of annual revenue, driven by new arrivals and post-Christmas exchanges.
