Shopping in New Zealand is a bargain hunter’s paradise. In this article we will try and compare New Zealand shops with those back in South Africa so that you know which shops to go to when you are looking for specific items. Obviously there are millions of shops and brand names, so it is not possible to show them all. We will only show the biggest and most well known businesses that are new to South Africans.

South Africa		New Zealand		Type of Shop
				Food
				Books & Magazines
				Stationery & Office Supplies
				Clothing & Beauty
				Bank
				Landlines
				Satellite TV
				Cellphones
				Clothing
				Online Auction & Selling
				Bit of Everything

Bargain Shopping in New Zealand

There is one very big difference between shopping in South Africa and New Zealand – the sales. In South Africa we would buy many of our things from the flea markets in order to get them cheaper. Because the flea market guys didn’t have high rent to pay, they could discount their prices. As New Zealand is essentially an isolated island, most products you buy are imported. This means that the shops need to order their goods by the container load. These containers take a few weeks to get here after the order is placed. This leaves the retailers with a problem – they need to order enough stock to last until the next container load lands and clears customs. They also then need to ensure they sell all their stock before the next container arrives otherwise they are going to incur storage costs and sit with heaps of dead stock.

The answer to the problem is to sell this excess stock at rock bottom prices!!! Retailers will actually even sell this stock at a huge loss sometimes just to get rid of it. A good example of this would be unsold Xmas decorations. A box of decorations that cost $10 before Xmas, may sell for as little as $0.50c after Xmas.

All the major retailers will have a large sale roughly every 4 weeks (the time it takes for the next container to arrive).  You can then get anything from 30% to 70% off the regular price. So if you are in the market to buy a high ticket item, then it is always best to wait a while until the sales come around.