“It all started twenty years ago – tells mr Karl Stockmann, director of Stockmann's
department stores in Finland – we’re member of a department stores association
and at the time the Galerie Lafayette was doing something similar. We liked the
idea, we studied it and we started. We believed so much in it we even registered
the name Hullut päivät – Crazy days”.The name clearly hints at the amazingly
low prices the most diverse items have on the four ‘crazy days’, but had this
been the only peculiarity of the Hullut Päivät you wouldn’t have been able to
tell them from any other ordinary sale.The craze starts with
the distribution, by mail if you’re a faithful Stockmann customer, of the yellow
booklet where all the different items on sales during the four crazy days are
listed.
{mosimage}A quick glance immediately reveals what’s different: all the items will
be on sale on different days, and if you really want to buy that pair of shoes
you’ll have to go on Wednesday, whilst the flight ticket to Barcelona – only 160
€ – could be yours on Saturday but not on Thursday! Every day different items
are being sold, and what you could get on Thursday is not at all what you can
buy on Friday. But beware: not all the reduced-price items are listed on the
booklet, and really all sort of goods are on sale, even cars!
Yellow is the
color of the Hullut Päivät – “to distinguih them from ordinary sales – tells us
Mr Stockmann – whose color is red”.
Inside Stockmann, twice a year, from
Wednesday to Saturday, Stockmann everything is yellow: yellow flags, yellow
banners, yellow ghosts, yellow t-shirted shop assistants, you can even eat
yellow ghost-shaped
pastries.
And this craze
it’s being exported: last Autumn to Moscow and before to the Baltic
states. No wonder: “ we organize the Hullut Päiväit twice a year, and of
course it depends, but they make for about the 10% of our yearly turn over” Mr
Stockmann says.