Retail Arbitrage Series – Sainsbury’s

Welcome back to the Retail Arbitrage Series! Off the back of the last blog where we covered Tesco, we’re staying on the supermarket theme and taking a closer look at Sainsbury’s, another great retailer to add to your sourcing route.

Sainsbury’s is one of those stores that isn’t always consistently great, but when it bangs, it bangs! Each year, it runs some of the best national clearance events, including the late Q3/ early Q4 LEGO Sale, and often discounts seasonal categories like garden toys, health & beauty, and electronics.

As with Tesco, most cities and towns have multiple Sainsbury’s locations and their sales are usually nationally consistent. That means if one store has it, the others will too, making it a solid store to include on any well planned sourcing trip.

How Sainsbury’s Works

A typical Sainsbury’s layout includes two sections:

• Three quarters of the shop is made up of grocery, health & beauty, cleaning products and pet care.
• One quarter of the shop is where you’ll find toys, homeware, electronics, stationery, and usually a clearance section

Key points to understand:

• Sainsbury’s uses red sale stickers to indicate discounts
• These stickers are embedded among full-price stock, not always flagged clearly
• There are usually two clearance sections:
  
  1. Near toys, electronics, and stationery
  2. Around the health and beauty aisles in the grocery section

The clearance sections are typically found at the end of aisles or tucked into side aisles, and it’s worth making a habit of checking both areas first on every visit.

Clearance Section:

As mentioned in the section above the clearance in Sainsbury’s is well structured but can be missed easily if you don’t know where to look.

• In the non food section, there’s typically a consolidated clearance shelf near toys, homeware, or electronics. This is where you’ll often find the best deals on toys and gadgets.
• In the grocery section, you’ll usually find a clearance area near the health and beauty aisle, often an end cap loaded with cosmetics, skincare, and seasonal gift sets.

Across the store, you’ll see individual red tags on shelves, these often represent short term discounts or stock reduction offers. Always scan red tagged products; these are where you will find leads mostly likely.

Where to Find Profitable Items

Profitable products can be found throughout the store, especially in:

• Toys
• Health and beauty
• Electronics
• Stationery

Stick to scanning:

• Items and shelves with red sale stickers

Very few full priced products in Sainsbury’s are a lead, this is due to high base pricing, so avoid wasting time on non reduced stock unless you’re following a specific lead.

A great strategy is to scout Sainsbury’s website for deals online first. Then use instore stock checkers that are in Discord groups or RA groups to confirm product availability in your local stores. This allows you to plan efficient sourcing trips with confidence.

Best Time of Year for Sainsbury’s

Sainsbury’s is on and off throughout the year, but these are the hot windows you should focus on:

• January to September: Strong for Health & Beauty and Cosmetics. Consistent drips of clearance throughout the year.
• January to February: Toys and gift sets leftover from Christmas often get heavily discounted.
• August to September: Watch the seasonal section for garden, outdoor toys, and summer stock.
• September to October: This is usually when the LEGO Sale begins. Select LEGO sets are nationally reduced and can be found in most stores. We’ll cover a hack for this shortly.
• October to December: Toys and electronics become the main focus. Toys reductions increase in Q4, making Sainsbury’s a solid shop for Q4.

Sainsbury’s Hacks

Here are the top hacks that can give you an edge when sourcing in Sainsbury’s:

1. Use Sainsbury’s handheld scanners (available near the front of the store). These often show lower prices than the shelf label, especially during the LEGO Sale. This gives you a leg up over sellers relying only on mobile scanning apps.
2. Scan your Nectar card at checkout. Over time, this builds up Nectar vouchers that you can use to offset your cost of goods, free money back into your business.
3. Use cashback apps like JamDoughnut, Cheddar, and EverUp for instant cashback on all purchases.
4. Cover multiple stores during national sales, especially LEGO sale or seasonal reductions. If one store has it, the others will too.
5. Join RA & Amazon Discord groups. These often post live Sainsbury’s deals, LEGO discounts, or national sale alerts you can act on quickly.

Pros & Cons of Sainsbury’s

Pros

• Runs great national clearance events.
• Instore scanners can unlock extra discounts
• Toy selection during Q4 is still strong
• Most locations are easy to access in retail parks or on town outskirts
• Sainsburys usually houses an Argos, i will visit this in a later blog!

Cons

• Sainsbury’s has dry spells, and when one store is dry, they usually all are
• 2024 discounts weren’t as good as previous years, especially on toys
• Stock levels are often low, making it harder to scale big wins
• Very few full priced products are worth scanning, stick to clearance or red tagged lines only