Here is how I imagine sales working.
Company X gets product Y that they want to sell. They add a margin on it and then sell these onto the customer. After a while the product Y becomes old and stale and everybody wants product Z. Company X wants rid of product Y to make way for the new hotness that is product Z. Company X has a sale and drops the price of Y. People who liked Y but couldn’t afford it now can whilst people with money enjoy product Z. Everybody is happy.
Christmas sales work in a similar way only there’s a huge amount of product as everyone is buying for Christmas. Some things aren’t as popular or the shop buys too many of them. After Christmas it has a January sale to get rid of the excess to make way for next years greatness.
All with me so far? Nothing too complicated with that is there?
OK, now explain to me why a car rental company has just emailed me with it’s January sale? Has it suddenly found itself with a big pile of rental in the corner. “Quick Dave get rid of all this unsold rental, it’s stinking up the place. The new rental arrives next week.” “Fucking hell Steve this rental is getting a bit threadbare, lets sell it on this car quick so we can stick the fresh rental on it as soon as it gets back.” “Oh my God, did you just see Michelle in her January rental? That’s so last year, it’s got to be February rental this season.”
I though that was bad enough until I walked past the bookmakers yesterday and noticed they a sale sign in the window. “Ah shite Sean would you look at all the horse bets we’ve got left over. whatever will we do with them?”