School Supplies Shopping Guide 2014 – Oakland County Moms Annual school supplies shopping guide for 2014. Which stores had the best prices on school supplies?
BACK TO SCHOOL SUPPLIES SHOPPING GUIDE 2014
I want to make note of a few things in reference to the school supplies prices chart… the school supplies selected are some of the most commonly requested items to be purchased. This is not a complete list (as we all so painfully know). This school supply list includes some of the basics and is set up to be a gauge to see where the different stores fall in comparison to one another.
This is our 6th year of doing our School Supplies Shopping Guide comparisons. Overall, school supplies prices are going up again (shock o_O). Surprisingly, the store with the greatest price increases was Target (up more than 25% from last year). Another surprise is Office Max. Office Max has been notoriously expensive through the years as far as school supplies deals go. Office Max actually showed an overall decrease in the bottom line from previous years, but it also didn’t carry the same scissors brand so we can guess that it is finding cheaper products to carry. Office Max may offer some buy-in deals, e.g. the .25 2-pocket pronged folders are .01 if you spend $5, limit 10.
When in a hurry as most of us are while shopping for back to school supplies, how and where a store has the school supplies section set up is key. Office Max has the school supplies scattered all throughout the store making it a difficult task to get everything on your list. The other stores had most of the supplies contained in one area, with one exception – Kmart. Kmart attempted a school supplies section that has now been moved to the front of the store. However, there are still a few items missing and you need to go further into the store to find them. Another problem with Kmart is that you can’t trust the labeled prices. I scanned the items and found they were priced differently than the prices listed. So, be cautious because it’s not always in your favor. Meijer and Walmart conveniently had the school supplies at the front entrance. Target has kept to their school supplies display in the back of the store. Meijer, Target and Walmart had all the supplies available in these areas.
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One odd find was that the 8-count Crayola washable markers is now available as a 10-count package. Even more surprising was that the retailers didn’t charge more for these larger packages, except for Office Max which raised the price $1. All of the retailers offered the 10-count package except for Kmart which still offers the 8-count for the same price as last year’s 8-count which is considerably higher than the price Meijer, Target and Walmart are charging for the 10-count.
When doing the price comparison for school supplies, I went with the lowest priced option available for each of the items.
See related posts below for more Oakland County Moms School Supplies Shopping Guides.
