Ever wonder exactly how we’ve determined the best time(s) of the year to find the best deal on just about everything? Well, wonder no longer because we’re spilling the beans and being transparent without fully giving away our secret sauce.
BY THE NUMBERS
Trendsicle editors (yes, actual humans) have been covering sales since 2017. At last glance we’ve covered over 398 different sales (see them all here) and counting! From those 398 sales, we’ve listed more than 4,000 individual products and items on sale.
# of Years Covering Sales Events
# of Sales & Deals We've Listed
Avg % You Can Typically Save
THE WHO, THE HOW & THE WHEN
THE WHO
While we have 4 different editors (all human!) who create content here at Trendsicle, it’s usually down to one or two that specifically cover sales. Our sales and deals editor John Zisa, and site director Patrick Varone have deals covered on everyday items like air fryers, grills, golf clubs, appliances, furniture, laptops – you name it.
But they’ll also cover major sales event for the folks at Nordstrom, Wayfair, Parachute, Minted, and more. With more than a combined 15 years of experience, they’ve found the best sales and deals on, literally, thousands of products.
THE HOW & THE WHEN
Similar to how we use our own data, research, and analysis during our product reviews and recommendation process (see how we do that here), we also use data to power just about all of our decisions, including when the best sales are typically occuring throughout the month, when the best time to buy the most sought-after items occurs, when the worst time to find deals takes place, and which retailers are offering the best deals and early-access previews.
When figuring out the best times of the year to buy popular products we fully utilize our relationship with Amazon (have you heard of them?) where we not only have over 7 years of access and data on hundreds of thousands of products, we update the sales automagically with a tool we’ve helped customize that allows new sales and deals to refresh every 24 hours. So, for example, a Chromebook that’s on sale today will pop-up on our sales page same-day and when that sale is over it’ll be removed. Once in a while there’s a little lag-time, but we’ve proven to have about a 92.5% accuracy rate with current sale prices from Amazon.
We also have relationships with hundreds of the top online and brick-and-mortar retailers so, from an editorially standpoint, we’re typically given a heads up earlier than most about upcoming sales events that are embargoed until the sales go live. Once we have that info, our editors will hand-select specific deals that they find to be any of the following:
- the best price they’ve seen in a while,
- an item that typically never goes on sale,
- an item that’s currently on-trend (thanks TikTok), or
- just something that they love and are totally into.
Since we have a minimum of 7 years of sales data, our editors are able to sift though hundreds of product categories (think: appliances, electronics, beauty, fashion, trends) and then thousands of individual product sales (think: YETI Ramblers, down comforters, snow blowers, infuser machines, books, toys) and then even retailer brands (think: Nordstrom, Wayfair, Macy’s, Walmart) and filter by months/weeks/days to see which of the above has the:
(1) most items on sale,
(2) best – and worst – sales percentage off and
(3) which brands/retailers appear the most during those timeframes.
And, VOILA, we’re able to find the best and worst times to buy these items (and product categories) along with any new sales trends we’ve discovered over the course of time (example: Back to School sales now start at the end of June – not August – and parents start shopping for Christmas toys in August – not November/December). Just to name a few!
We’re now able to analyze this data on a rolling monthly basis and pay extra close attention to deals during major sales events throughout the year like Black Friday, Memorial Day, Amazon Prime Day, Way Day, etc.
IN CONCLUSION
So there you have it. We use data from over 7 years of promoting sales on thousands of products, in hundreds of categories from dozens of top-rated and trusted retailers. Our editors analyze this data to come up with the best time(s) of the year to buy popular products in trendy categories outsize of the “normal” sales events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Check out some recent articles we’ve created based on the optimal times to buy.
