Shoe Prices

Today I bought my first pair of shoes in about exactly one year.

In fact, I bought two pair. I always wait for the Buy-One, Get-One-50%-Off Sale, then buy two pairs, and put one pair on hold until the first runs out, which is usually about 6 or so months.

Today was no different: went to the mall, saw that the store - Sport Mart - had a BOGO sale, and found the pair for me. But there was something unexpected: There were NO pairs of shoes that I could find that were over $100! Have shoe prices actually gone down?!

Actually, there are one of two scenarios: a) shoe prices actually have gone down, or b) Sport Mart, who did in the past used to sell higher end shoes, made the decision in the last year to not stock or sell higher end models from Nike, Adidas, etc in their stores.

In either case, it's a sign of the times. Stores need loans to buy inventory, and buying inventory they haven't sold yet is risky if it isn't guaranteed that consumers will snap up the products in a timely manner. If I was Sport Mart, heck, I wouldn't buy Nike's $160 shoes either, especially if trends were showing that less people were buying them, which has probably been the case in the last couple of years.

In any case, I still managed to fork out for two $90-pairs of shoes - the second pair for $45. Not too shabby.