The summer sales began on 4 July 2026. And the first-weekend figures describe an almost static market, a selective consumer and a sector that keeps looking for the cause in the wrong place.
But let’s take things in order.
According to the first survey by the Confimprese Research Centre, total retail closed the weekend down 0.3% on the same period in 2025. Clothing and accessories fell by 0.4%, with store visits down 2.4%. In other retail, sales slipped by 0.1% despite a slight rise in footfall.
The Confcommercio Research Office estimates turnover of 3.2 billion euros for the whole season, based on average spending of 201 euros per household.
Taken alone, these figures describe a weak start. Read alongside the loss of shops, jobs and share of spending recorded in recent years, they point to a problem that is far less cyclical. One that Mario Resca, chairman of Confimprese, described in these words:
“Sales are no longer, on their own, a driver of consumption. Customers look for value, but they buy only what they consider genuinely necessary.”
The sector heard this and responded with the usual arguments: the heat, shrinking purchasing power, e-commerce, a start date that came too early.
All true, of course, but not enough.
These factors may explain why the first weekend was weak. Not why a significant share of discounted purchases took place before the sales had even begun. The problem is structural.
The problem is the full price, not the discount
According to the survey conducted by Ipsos for Fismo Confesercenti, 36% of respondents had already bought discounted products before 4 July. Among 18- to 34-year-olds, the figure rose to 48%.
Almost one young person in two had therefore taken advantage of a promotion before the official start of the promotions. Part of demand, then, had already been expressed. It is fair to ask, therefore, when the sales really begin. But also, and above all, what years of early promotions have taught us about the full price.
For an increasingly large slice of the market, full price is no longer perceived as the final price. It has become the number that comes before the discount. A temporary stage, to be waited out until the next newsletter, the next exclusive offer or the next promotional weekend.
In short, customers haven’t stopped buying. They’ve learnt when it pays to do so.
Fismo Confesercenti estimates that end-of-season sales account for between 25 and 30% of the annual turnover of a fashion shop. Over the past ten years, however, early promotions and markdowns have progressively eroded their weight, while the overall turnover generated by discounts spread throughout the year has grown.
The problem isn’t just the July sales. It’s the January, March, May, October and November sales, under another name.
How to teach a consumer to wait
The mechanism that produced this outcome follows a logic.
An occasional promotion can help clear stock, reward customers or support a particular commercial moment. When discounts become frequent, predictable and interchangeable, however, they convey a different message: the full price is not meant to last. Or better still: the full price is an illusion.
Be careful, because consumers learn.
Every mid-season sale, every exclusive promotion, every weekend flash sale reinforces the belief that waiting is the best option. Buying at full price raises the perceived risk of discovering, a few days later, that the same product could have cost less. And so the sales turn into pricing strategy, even when the brand does not realise it.
And once this lesson has been learned, a sign reading ‘summer sale –50%’ is not enough to restore a sense of the exceptional to something that now happens all year round.
A sector that has stopped defending its own value
Between 2019 and 2025, more than 18,000 clothing and footwear shops closed in Italy. The sector’s retail fabric shrank by 13.5%, with the loss of around 17,000 jobs.
Over the same period, the share of household spending devoted to fashion and footwear fell from 7 to 3.7%.
Are the sales to blame? Of course not. Over the past decade we have lived through a pandemic, rising costs, shrinking purchasing power, the growth of e-commerce, ever-larger wars, and a profound shift in consumer habits.
Yet, on closer inspection, these figures reveal the fragility of the sector, which is certainly paying an economic price, but above all a structural difficulty in building perceived value regardless of geopolitical conditions and of the price shown in the shop window.
Is moving the date enough to solve the problem?
Of course not. Public debate on the sales revolves almost entirely around the start date, but as shown here, that is not the point.
The real problem is price perception, and the reason why waiting is not the best choice.
To achieve this, defending the full price would be essential.
Defending it from what? Not from periodic offers, but from devaluation. And to do so, one would need to create a legible pricing architecture with occasional discounts, recognisable reasons, consistent rules and a product able to support the value being asked.
In short, give the customer a reason to buy that does not always coincide with the fear of missing out on an offer.
The 2026 summer sales are flat partly because the sales now seem to be permanently open. And when the sales are always open, there is no rush to buy.
New connections (FAQ)
Is the weakness of the sales really down to brands, or mainly to falling purchasing power?
Both factors carry weight, but they explain different phenomena. Among those planning to cut their budget, 65% cited the cost of living and inflation as the main reason. This helps explain why spending remains cautious. It does not explain, however, why 36% of respondents had already bought discounted products before the official start of the sales. Demand has not necessarily disappeared: part of it has been brought forward by a promotional system that made buying earlier worthwhile.
Can a small brand afford not to follow its competitors’ promotions?
It depends on what it wants to build over time. A small brand that matches every competitor promotion risks becoming a less recognisable version of them, with less capacity to scale. Giving up constant discounting may cost sales in the short term, but it allows a different expectation to take hold: the price stays credible because the customer does not expect it to be cut a few days later. This choice works, however, only when product, service and identity genuinely support the value being asked.
How do you rebuild the credibility of full price?
A communications campaign is not enough. What is needed is consistent behaviour over time: cutting out-of-season promotions, making discounts less predictable, holding prices steadily and building reasons to buy that do not depend solely on value for money. The process may reduce volumes in the short term, and it only works if the product has real value. When that value doesn’t exist, the problem isn’t solved by changing the promotional calendar. The offer itself has to be rethought. And that is often the conversation a brand would rather put off.