I love it when a good idea catches on. A certain marketing strategy that I find really interesting has started to get traction with some retailers and it spells good news for consumers since a core part of the strategy is to sell merchandise at a huge discount.

Essentially, a retailer will sell one item at a time, they price it at a staggering discount and sell only that item until they are sold-out – then they post the next item and the process starts again. You may have heard of a company called “Woot” (they are the ones who originated the idea). If you hear someone at work talking about “today’s Woot”, this is what they mean.

Other retailers have caught on to the success of this type of sale and have started to do their own versions. Sam’s Club is including a similar strategy in their Holidays Made Simple campaign (yeah, yeah I am writing a lot about Sam’s Club right now, but in order to bring you the Gift Card giveaways, I need to help promote the site – and why not, they’ve done a good job, so take advantage of it). They are calling this campaign “Deal of the Day” .

Every day between now and December 24th, they are going to release a new item in a limited quantity. Each item will be sold at a steep discount (online-only). The difference between this and something like Woot is the exclusion of a “one item at a time” rule. With Deal of the Day, if an item doesn’t sell out in one day, they keep on selling it and the next day’s deal is posted as well, so there may be a bunch of good deals available all at once.

How much of a discount are we talking here?

• That Heys Luggage retails for $296 on Amazon so you would save – $197

• The Espresso Maker is $155 on Amazon so you would save $77

• The HP computer is normally $599 so you would save $200

• The Sony VAIO retails for anywhere from $850 to $1000 on other sites, so you would save up to $400

See what I am talking about? I don’t know too many people who would complain about saving 40-60% off the price of some very cool stuff.

Giveaway!
Here we go again – I’m giving away another $25 Sam’s Club Gift Card (for the record, at this very moment the Wife and I are giving away about $900 worth of gift cards & memberships, with more to come over the next few weeks).

Since we’re talking about “good deals”, I’m making that the theme of this giveaway. In your entry, tell me about an awesome deal you’ve gotten on something – anything at all. I don’t need an essay, I’m just curious about your deal-making savvy.

I’ll get you started (actually, this was the Wife’s doing, but she’s better at this kind of thing than I am). Back when we were living in an apartment in Quincy MA, she came across a little consignment shop. In this shop she found a pair of chairs – and she knew right away that she had to buy them. On more than one occasion I had pointed them out in a catalog and mentioned how much I liked them. When she asked the shop owner about the price, the woman said “well, they are a bit weird and no-one seems interested, so what would you pay?”. So the Wife takes a shot with a very low offer “$100 for the pair”  – and the owner says, “sure, sounds good”.

It was definitely good for us – because this person didn’t know what she was selling. You can see the chairs in the picture to the left. If you aren’t familiar with them, they are called “Wassily Chairs”, a pretty famous design from 1925. Anyway, you can see how much they retail for these days if you follow this link. When you consider that we got ours for $50 each, I’d say we got a pretty incredible deal. Maybe not as impressive as finding a Jackson Pollock at a yard sale, but still good.

So that is my good-deal story, I look forward to hearing all about yours.

Official Rules

1. You must become(or already be a subscriber to this site in order to participate in the contest).
2. To enter, leave a comment and tell me about a great deal you’ve gotten on something in the past.
3. You must provide the requested information to enter, comments that just say “Enter Me” will be disqualified.
4. One winner will receive a $25 Sam’s Club gift card. The winner will be chosen at random using Random.org
5. The contest will end on Friday November 13th at 10pm. Entries must be received before that time to be eligible.
6. The winner will be notified by email and posted to this site. The winner will have 48 hours to claim their prize. If it is not claimed in that time,

Extra Credit!

1. Check out the Deal of the Day section of  Sam’s Club website. Add a comment about the deal you think is the best (include link in your comment) – 3 extra entries.
2. Become a follower of this site using the Google Friend Connect widget – 1 extra entry
3. Become a follower on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway – 1 extra entry (include link to tweet in comment)
4. Blog about this giveaway – 3 extra entries (include link to post in your comments)

The information provided in this article was shared as part of the Sam’s Club Sharing the Savings blogger campaign. Compensation was received for participation but the views and opinions expressed are solely my own.