Last week, Michael Kors found itself dropping a cool $5 million to settle a lawsuit that pertained to falsely discounting things in its outlet stores. Specifically, a pair of pants in an outlet store said to retail for $120 was "marked down" to $79.99, only the pants never actually sold for that much in an actual MK store, but was made specifically for the MK outlets. Kors paid the damages and agreed to change its labeling practices.
But, wow, it really makes you think *Twitter truther activist voice*. And, as Quartz discusses, outlets are kind of a big fucking lie. Kors isn't the first brand to have charges brought against it and Congress even wrote a letter to the FTC regarding similar practices where brands have lower quality pieces made specifically for their outlet locations, rather than offering seasonal stock leftovers at a discount. Meanwhile, these outlets are HUGE business for brands from everyone to Michael Kors and Versace to Moncler and Saint Laurent.
Roughly 7% of all luxury stores are outlets, as Quartz's graph shows, which makes them essentially diffusion labels with lower quality gear without actually saying so. It might be high time to start skipping outlets all together. That way you might actually end up saving some skrilla.
