Starbucks Offers 40% Discount on Holiday Merchandise

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Starbucks Offers 40% Discount on Holiday Merchandise

© courtesy of Starbucks Corp.

Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX), like many other retailers, has inventory left over from the holiday. Its solution? Discount the items and hope to clear them out. Likely, Starbucks will make little or nothing on the products, but holding them until next year is a poor option, if it is an option at all.

Unlike retailers that lost holiday sales because of weather, Starbucks’ own holiday inventory is almost certainly a small portion of its total revenue potential. However, Starbucks already has begun to promote gifts for Valentine’s Day, looking for revenue well into February.

Starbucks has kept some of the holiday products in its own warehouses, and it may have had local stores ship them back to central locations. Starbucks is only offering discounts to this inventory online. Shelf space is precious at Starbucks, as is the case at any fast-food retailer. Old products are a poor use of display space.
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What has Starbucks done to clear out holiday products? Among other things, “buy one, get one free.” This is the offer on Christmas K-Cup Packs and Christmas Blend, Ground.

Dumping old inventory is usually a sign of desperation. In the case of Starbucks, it is just good business.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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