Shopping Guides How To Furnish Your Home For Less

Date Published:

10/09/2008

Want to furnish your home beautifully but being squeezed by the credit crunch? What if we told you there are shopping meccas around the UK where there’s a sale on every day of the year - and you might be able to pick up a genuine bargain. Here’s how to bag a bargain at factory outlet stores.

By Sarah Jagger

Where To Go For Discounts

Discount shopping is huge in the UK. From just a handful of factory outlets in the 90s, they are now dotted in the form of discount retail villages and one-off stores countrywide. If you’ve never visited one don’t expect to find the old tat that no one wanted at full price. In most of the outlets, the stock is in mint condition and is simply the previous season’s or surplus. Nor are the discount outlets confined to designer fashion. You’re also likely to find top quality homewares too.

Where To Find Bargains

The McArthurGlen group of discount villages owns seven outlets from Livingston near Edinburgh to Swindon in Wiltshire, including the largest Cheshire Oaks, near Ellesmere Port. Management group Realm owns seven outlets including Freeport Fleetwood in Lancashire, Atlantic Village in North Devon and the UK’s first outlet village Clarks in Somerset.

Clarks has 90 stores including discounted-versions of high street favourites Next and Marks & Spencer, as well as homeware specialists Le Creuset and Ruby & Roses. For upmarket designer-label shopping, Bicester Shopping Village near Oxford offers some serious sophistication with homewares from Cath Kidston, Descamps and Mulberry.

To find your nearest outlet, The ShoppingVillages website lists the UK's discount and factory stores on its website. It is usefully split into regions so you can find out what's in your area. You can sign up to get e-mail alerts of special offers and share your retail experiences with other discerning shoppers on the message board.

What You Can Save

‘What makes these discount outlets different from the high street stores is the permanent discount they offer,’ says Atalanti Hadjipateras of Bicester Shopping Village in Oxfordshire. ‘These can be up to 60 per cent. Plus, at Bicester we also have special clearance months, where discounts can rise up to 70 per cent. The great thing about homeware is even if it is last season’s stock it doesn’t go out of fashion.’

For instance, at Bicester Shopping Village you can grab a Villeroy & Boch Audun dinner set for six people for £228 – a 60 per cent reduction off the £570 recommended price tag. You can save up to a third on gorgeous Cath Kidston goodies: a large tablecloth will set you back £25 instead of £35, and napkins are a snip at £10 each. While The White Company Antibes Egyptian cotton bed linen costs £49.50 for a King-size duvet – a 50 per cent saving - and matching pillowcases are £9.35 each instead of £17.

While over at Freeport Braintree, you can pick up a ProCook Anodised Cookware Set for £199.95 instead of £339.75, a Gaggia coffee machine for £99 instead of £149 and a Ponden Mill Coloroll Marcel Throw for £64.99 instead of £44.99.