Which shops are always on sale?
64 of the 368 shops big enough to judge have more than half their catalogue marked down at any given moment, and several are above 90%. A discount that never ends is not a discount — it is a price with a line through a larger number beside it.
The shops with the most of their catalogue marked down
Share of the catalogue carrying a struck-through price above the asking price, for every shop with at least 300 listings. Read twice a day, counted whole.
| Shop | Catalogue on sale | Marked-down listings | Listings read |
|---|---|---|---|
| 99bikes.com.au | 95.4% | 6,577 | 6,896 |
| kcdcskateshop.com | 95% | 1,155 | 1,216 |
| daddiesboardshop.com | 94.5% | 44,580 | 47,184 |
| electricrideco.com | 94.4% | 869 | 921 |
| hiboy.com | 92.5% | 470 | 508 |
| havenskateshop.com | 91.8% | 368 | 401 |
| isinwheel.co.uk | 89.7% | 541 | 603 |
| gogobest.com | 89.6% | 909 | 1,015 |
| frontsideclothing.co.uk | 88.1% | 645 | 732 |
| ccs.com | 86.7% | 49,507 | 57,088 |
| buildkitboards.com | 82.8% | 3,165 | 3,823 |
| iscooterglobal.co.uk | 82.7% | 553 | 669 |
| reidcycles.com.au | 81.7% | 1,657 | 2,029 |
| habitatskateboards.com | 80.8% | 253 | 313 |
| backfireboardsusa.com | 78% | 359 | 460 |
| crooze.com.au | 77.4% | 39,352 | 50,872 |
| jasionbike.com | 76.4% | 252 | 330 |
| inlinex.com.sg | 74.9% | 7,539 | 10,069 |
| hover-store.fr | 71% | 311 | 438 |
| boardhouse.pl | 70.6% | 1,015 | 1,437 |
| bikesonline.com.au | 69.9% | 1,304 | 1,865 |
| bikesonline.com | 69.7% | 2,074 | 2,975 |
| boardroomshop.com | 69.7% | 23,102 | 33,148 |
| us.oneill.com | 69.3% | 12,392 | 17,872 |
| verrealboard.com | 69.2% | 211 | 305 |
Some of these are among the largest and best-known retailers in the trade, carrying tens of thousands of listings. The size is the point: a permanent markdown across twenty thousand items is a decision about how to present prices, not a clearance.
What a permanent sale actually costs you
Nothing directly — and that is the trap. The shop may well be cheapest; several here are. The cost is that you lose the ability to tell. A discount badge exists to answer one question: is now a good time? When the badge is permanent, the question has no answer, and the reader has to do the comparison the badge was supposed to spare them.
This is why every verdict on this site is comparative rather than historical. We do not ask whether a shop has marked something down — that is the shop talking about itself. We ask what every other shop charges for the same product today, which is a question no merchant can answer about himself and no badge can fake.
The companion measurement is how many advertised discounts survive that comparison. The two pages answer different halves of the same doubt: this one asks whether the badge means anything at this shop, that one asks whether a specific badge is true today.
What we are not saying
- We are not calling anyone dishonest. A reference price can be set in good faith, and in many jurisdictions it is regulated. We publish a count of what a shop's own catalogue shows, and link to the shop so you can check.
- A high share is not a high price. These are independent measurements. Some of the shops highest on this table are genuinely the cheapest place to buy a given product, and our own deals pages will say so on the day it is true.
- A struck-through price under 3% and under $1 is ignored entirely. A shop crossing out five cents is not claiming anything, and counting it would drown the cases that matter.
- The threshold is a floor, not a filter on inconvenient shops. Every shop above 300 listings is ranked, whatever the result.
The other end of the list
A ranking of who discounts most is only half a measurement. Here is the bottom of the same list — the shops whose catalogues are largely sold at the asking price, with no line through anything.
| Shop | Catalogue on sale | Listings read |
|---|---|---|
| streetmachineskate.com | 64.8% | 2,323 |
| buzzzskateshop.com | 65.7% | 9,680 |
| santacruzskateboards.com.au | 66.1% | 2,489 |
| urbanbikesdirect.com | 67% | 1,066 |
| onestopboardshop.com | 68.6% | 8,625 |
| verrealboard.com | 69.2% | 305 |
| us.oneill.com | 69.3% | 17,872 |
| boardroomshop.com | 69.7% | 33,148 |
| bikesonline.com | 69.7% | 2,975 |
| bikesonline.com.au | 69.9% | 1,865 |
These shops are not more generous, and a low figure is not a recommendation. What it means is narrower and more useful: when one of them marks something down, the badge carries information. It is an event rather than a permanent state of the website, and it is worth looking at.
That is the whole reason to publish both ends. A discount badge is a signal, and a signal is only worth the rarity of the thing it signals. At the top of this page the badge is background noise; at the bottom it is news. Neither tells you which shop is cheapest today — that is a comparison between shops, and it is what the rest of this site does.
Questions this raises
Is a shop that is always on sale ripping me off?
Not necessarily, and we do not say so. A permanent markdown is a pricing presentation, and the price you pay may still be the best available — some of the shops at the top of this table genuinely are cheapest. What it does mean is that the discount badge carries no information: it cannot tell you today is better than last week, because every week looks like this.
How do you decide a shop is always on sale?
We count, for every shop with at least 300 listings, what share of its catalogue carries a struck-through price above the asking price. No judgement, no sampling — the whole catalogue, read twice a day.
Why the minimum of 300 listings?
Because a shop of forty items with thirty-eight marked down tells you nothing — that may be a genuine closing-down sale. At a few hundred items, a fully struck-through catalogue is a policy rather than an event.
Does this mean the price is fake?
It means the reference price is doing no work. Whether a specific discount holds up is a different measurement, and we publish that too: see how many advertised discounts survive comparison with a competitor.
Which shops are not on this list?
The ones whose catalogues are mostly sold at the asking price — the majority. The table shows the top of the ranking; the full order is the order of the measurement, and no shop can pay to move within it.