I think it is true for most of us that a sensibility for being a smart-buyer develops from college when one has to manage their own finances trying to balance roti, kapda, makan with beer and wine. Having the fortune of being in Delhi for higher studies made the job surprisingly easier. Of course, where else can one have the privilege of being able to buy 5–6 trendy tops in under 1000 bucks from Janpath market and then within a distance of merely a few meters can go and buy a pair of comforting Levis jeans to balance fashion & fads of college life with comfort. Now that you can not carry Sarojini and Janpath to every city you move to, all you can carry is the lessons taught by these live examples of real-time marketplaces that teach you the seller’s ideology behind pricing and consumer’s ideology behind negotiating. So, the first lesson that anyone who goes to Sarojini knows and can try to replicate to online shopping is that in even 50% of the price quoted, there is decent enough profit for the seller. So I take this very seriously especially when I am buying apparels.
My last purchase was a white embroidered t-shirt from ESPRIT, which is an over-priced brand for the kind of plain and simple yet very comfortable summer t-shirts that it sells, along with two pairs of Levis denim. These had to wait for almost a month to become a part of my cupboard from being a part of my cart. I was waiting for the right kind of coupon to launch on Myntra that would be convincing enough to me to shell out money for two pricey brands. It is very easy to get 30–40% discount on most of ESPRIT merchandise whereas finding a lower figure written in bold font on Myntra right before the faintly written MRP figure dissected proudly from the middle with a horizontal line with a catchy red colored percentage figure to its left, which is the real highlight of the entire manoeuvre. It is not an everyday discovery as far as a brand like Levis is concerned. So these two denims were making me wait for long until this difficult moment of decision making arrived for me during the popular sale wherein you could get points in exchange of old-clothes and could buy the products for a price minus the value of those points. At that time the deal offered me 1750 Rs + 249 points (if I remember clearly). I had to then decide whether this was a convincing deal or not. I converted the points into percentage and realized that it comes to just around 12.5% but on an average 15% discount is the least that Myntra provides so I decided to put a hold on the purchase. Myntra to my observation give good deals on the weekends, therefore, I very religiously would check for discounts on every weekend, until the last weekend when finally a coupon was offering Rs 1000 discount on some minimum balance and that is how I got my two beautiful pairs of Levis for Rs 1500 each (excluding taxes), 25% discount is a satisfactory one for Levis and also when I calculated the effective discount on the ESPRIT t-shirt that I purchased along, I felt really smart when I saw that I got it in aproximately 39% of the MRP i.e 61% discount.
I would sum up by saying, you can take a girl out of Sarojini but you cant take Sarojini out of a girl.
Submitted By : Surbhi Mehta