Mailbag: Should I Run a Summer Sale or Wait for Back-to-School?

A reader wrote in this week with a question we hear some version of every July:

“Traffic has been slow since the Fourth. Do I run a sale now to try to move product, or hold off and save the discount for back-to-school? I don’t want to waste it.”

Fair question, and there isn’t a single right answer. It depends on what you sell, why you’d be discounting, and what “back-to-school” actually means for your shop. Here’s how I’d think through it.

First, figure out if back-to-school even applies to you. For sellers of planners, personalized pencil cases, dorm decor, teacher gifts, or anything a parent or student buys in late summer, back-to-school is a real demand window, and it usually starts building in early August and runs through early September. If that’s your category, a July discount is probably premature. You’d be training buyers to expect a lower price right before the period when you have the most pricing leverage of the year. Save it.

For everyone else, back-to-school is mostly irrelevant. If you sell wedding stationery, pet portraits, ceramics, or home goods, there’s no meaningful lift coming in August tied to school starting. Waiting “for back-to-school” in that case isn’t a strategy, it’s just delay.

Second, ask what the sale is actually for. A discount can do two different jobs, and they call for different timing. If the goal is to move slow inventory, clear out a discontinued colorway, or generate cash flow because July has been thin, that’s a maintenance sale, and running it now, while things are quiet, is the lower-cost time to do it. You’re not competing with a seasonal surge, and you’re not cannibalizing demand you’d otherwise get at full price. If the goal is to drive a spike in new orders and reviews, the calculation changes, because a spike is worth more when it lands in front of higher search volume. Late July into August, as school shopping picks up, gives a promotional push more to work with than the dead weeks right after the Fourth.

Third, watch for discount fatigue. If you ran a sale for Prime Day, another for the Fourth, and now you’re considering a third for late July, ask whether your regular customers are starting to notice the pattern. Repeat buyers who’ve seen three discounts in a month learn to wait for the next one instead of buying at full price. That’s a real cost even when the sale itself performs fine in the moment. If you’ve already discounted twice this summer, this is a good week to let prices sit and see what full-price demand actually looks like before you decide.

My actual answer: if your product has no back-to-school angle and you need to move inventory or smooth out a slow month, a modest, targeted sale now (specific items, not storewide) is reasonable and low-risk. If your product does have a back-to-school angle, hold your best discount for the window when the traffic will actually be there to see it, and use July instead to get listings, photos, and any seasonal variations ready so you’re not scrambling in the first week of August.

If you’ve got a question for a future Mailbag, send it in. We read all of them, even the ones we don’t have a clean answer to.