Guide

No shop is the cheapest, and the numbers are not close

Published 20 Sept · By Redacción HYPEIBIZA

We track ten thousand products that more than two shops sell at once. The single shop that most often has the lowest price still loses that contest about nine times out of ten.

Everyone has a shop they trust to be cheap. It is usually the one that was cheap the last time they looked, which is a sample of one. Line up every product that at least three of the shops we track are selling right now. Ask which shop holds the lowest price on each. The answer is a long, flat list, not one shop.

The leader wins about one product in nine

The top shop in that ranking holds the best price on roughly a ninth of the shared products. Second and third are barely behind it, and then the share falls slowly across a dozen more shops. There is no runaway winner and no shop you can pick once and stop thinking about. The leader also changes: a shop that clears a season goes to the top for a few weeks and then drops back.

Big chains and small shops both win

The ranking mixes the large European platforms with specialist sneaker shops and national sports chains, from several countries. Size is not what decides it. A specialist with a tenth of the catalogue wins whenever it decides to clear a particular model. The platform that is cheapest on a running shoe is regularly beaten on a terrace classic by a shop you have never ordered from.

Product

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adidas Samba OG Black White Gum

Style code: B75807/BZ0058

fromRRP 119,95 €89,96 €· 16 shops

Cheapest today: KICKZ, ASOS, Sizeer

View product

Why the leader keeps changing

Three things move a shop up and down that ranking, and none is a permanent policy. The first is the clearance cycle. A shop that ends a season leads on everything it is clearing for a few weeks, then falls back once the stock is gone. The second is geography. The same retail group runs separate sites per country, with separate buying, separate sales and sometimes very different prices for one shoe.

The third is which shoes a shop chose to buy deep on, because the model it over-ordered is the model it discounts. None of that is visible from inside one shop. You only see it by watching all of them at once, every day, which is the entire reason this site exists.

The cheapest listing is not always the best offer

A price on two remaining sizes is no price for most people, and the lowest number usually looks like that. Before you trust a low figure, check that the shop still has your size and when we last looked. A clearance size can sell out within hours of our check. A slightly higher price with the full size run and stock in three shops is often the better buy. It is never the first row you see.

What this is actually good for

Check the shoe, not the shop. The shop that was cheapest on your last pair tells you very little about this one.
Loyalty to one retailer costs money on almost every purchase where three or more of them stock the same thing.
A shop that is expensive on one model is not expensive on everything. It may hold the lowest price on the next thing you want.
Where a shop has a full size run and a low price at the same time, that is the rare combination worth acting on quickly.

Three staples that several shops stock at once. Open one and read down the offers: the order is rarely the one you would guess.

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