Our bi-annual White Sale is upon us, and we find ourselves fielding the same question over and over: is the sale only applicable to white items?
While the answer is a resounding NO! (the sale is store [and rainbow] wide), it's certainly a fair question; if one's not familiar with the concept of a White Sale it's a logical jump to think it'd only apply to white stuff. So let's clear the air with a little history lesson - here's the origin of the famed White Sale:
In late 1800s Pennsylvania, John Wanamaker founded one of the first department stores in America. Wanamaker was a visionary, and pioneered many of the practices typical of the department store experience we now take for granted, including accepting returns & exchanges, printed merchandise quality guarantees, and the implementation of price tags (seriously!).
Beyond these innovations, Wanamaker is credited with putting on the very first White Sale, a January sale dedicated to discounting bed linens (which - at the time - were only available in white). Wanamaker was a talented marketer and knew that the allure of an annual sale would help boost sales of these products in the slower months following the holidays.
It was the early 1980s when Peggy Byron, Au Lit's pioneering founder, resurrected the White Sale at her then-new bedding boutique. Building off of Wanamaker's bed-linen-centric sale, Peggy took the idea to the next level, making it store-wide: inclusive of every item, colour, and collection. Rather than a ploy to simply boost sales in the slower months, Peggy saw the White Sale as an opportunity to offer customers our very best, tried-and-true core collections at an even better price-point. For us here at Au Lit, The White Sale has become a bi-annual tradition we are proud to uphold in Peggy's honour year after year.
