Updated August 2026
Clearance Markdown Schedules by Retailer: What's Real and What's Folklore
There is a lot of confident advice about markdown schedules, and a fair amount of it is repeated folklore that nobody has checked. We scan clearance inventory across thirteen retailers, including roughly 2,000 Home Depot stores, so some of these claims are testable. Here’s what survives contact with the data and what doesn’t.
What’s actually reliable
Seasonal transitions. This is the strongest and most useful pattern in retail. Stores must clear floor space for the next season, and the calendar is not negotiable. The transitions:
| Window | What goes on clearance |
|---|---|
| Early January | Holiday decor, winter apparel, gift sets, wrapping |
| Late February – March | Winter goods, heaters, snow equipment, cold-weather apparel |
| Late June – July | Spring garden, patio furniture, grills (first cut), pool supplies |
| Late August – September | Summer goods, outdoor furniture (deepest cuts), grills, air conditioners |
| Late October | Halloween, fall decor |
| Late December – January | Christmas, everything seasonal |
Buying the previous season’s goods at the end of clearance and holding to the next season is the most dependable play in this business. It costs you storage and patience, and it works.
Product lifecycle events. Discontinued models, packaging changes, and brand transitions all force markdowns regardless of calendar. These aren’t scheduled, but they’re detectable — a price that drops and keeps dropping is a product being cleared out, and that trajectory predicts further cuts better than any weekday rule.
Quarter and fiscal year ends. Inventory sitting on the books at a reporting date is a problem for someone. There’s a real, if softer, tendency toward clearing in the final weeks of a fiscal quarter.
What doesn’t hold up
The Home Depot “cents code” system. The claim is that a price ending in a specific number of cents encodes the markdown stage — .06 means second markdown, .03 means final, .01 means penny, and so on. It’s repeated in videos, forum posts, and a lot of blog content.
Against our own scan history it doesn’t hold. Endings like .02 and .03 appear on roughly a tenth of a percent of clearance prices, which is far too rare to be a system, and their presence doesn’t predict what the price does next. We removed this machinery from our own products after checking it, because we’d built on it too.
What does predict a further cut is unglamorous: a price that has already dropped, combined with declining on-hand quantity at the store. An item on its second markdown with three units left is far more likely to go lower than an item on its first with forty. That signal is real, it’s just less fun than a secret code.
“Markdown day is Wednesday” (or Monday, or Thursday). Retailers do cluster markdown work, but the day varies by market, by store, and by department, and it changes. District-level scheduling means a rule that’s true at your store may be false at the store fifteen miles away. Learn your stores by observation rather than importing someone else’s weekday.
“Ask an employee to scan for hidden clearance.” This works sometimes and is worth being polite about, but it’s not a system, and treating it as one wears out your welcome at stores you need to keep visiting.
Watch the price, not the calendar
Endless records the previous price on every clearance item it finds, so you can see what actually dropped and by how much — across Home Depot, Walmart, Lowe's, Best Buy, Nordstrom Rack and more, updated as the scans run.
See live markdownsBy retailer
Home Depot. Deep clearance is real and store-specific — the same SKU is routinely a different price at two stores in the same metro, which is the single most exploitable fact about this retailer. Seasonal transitions in garden, outdoor power equipment, and patio drive the biggest waves. Ignore the cents-code advice. Do pay attention to on-hand quantity: our data shows deep-clearance items with low counts disappear fast.
Walmart. Rollbacks are temporary promotional pricing, not clearance, and they revert. True clearance is a separate flag. Price endings are widely reported to be meaningful here, with $0.00 endings associated with final markdown; that’s consistent with a lot of anecdotal reporting, but verify at your own stores rather than trusting it as a rule.
Target. Runs the most structured public system of the major retailers, with clearance percentages stepping down in defined increments over a period of weeks and price endings that correspond to discount level. Departments are cut on a rotating weekday schedule that varies by store. Of the big-box retailers this one rewards learning the local pattern the most.
Lowe’s. Similar seasonal rhythm to Home Depot with a smaller clearance footprint per store. Back-aisle and end-of-aisle clearance sections are worth a specific walk. Per-store price variation exists but is less pronounced than Home Depot’s.
Best Buy. Open-box and clearance are separate things with separate pricing logic. Open-box condition grades matter enormously to resale value. Clearance follows product-cycle events — new model launches — more than a calendar.
Costco. Price endings are the well-known signal here: .97 endings indicate a manager markdown, and an asterisk on the shelf tag means the item isn’t being reordered. Both of those are widely corroborated and consistent with what we see. The combination — .97 plus an asterisk — is the strongest single signal in big-box retail.
Nordstrom Rack. Clearance runs continuously rather than seasonally, with regular additional-percentage-off events layered on top. Depth is high and rotation is fast.
How to build your own schedule
Since the reliable patterns are local, the useful move is to measure rather than to memorize:
- Pick three stores you can reach easily.
- Visit each on a different weekday for a few weeks and note which departments changed.
- Track the items you see marked down and check them again a week later to learn how fast each store steps prices down.
- Concentrate future trips on the store-and-department combinations that were actually productive.
That’s four to six weeks of mild effort and it produces a schedule that’s true where you live, which is worth more than any general table including this one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do Home Depot price endings indicate markdown stage?
No. The widely repeated cents-code system — .06 for second markdown, .03 for final, and so on — doesn’t hold up. Those endings appear on a fraction of a percent of clearance prices and don’t predict subsequent price changes. A price that has already dropped, paired with low on-hand quantity, is a much better predictor.
What day do stores mark down clearance?
It varies by retailer, by store, and by department, and it changes over time. District-level scheduling means the pattern at one store often doesn’t apply to another in the same metro. Observing your own stores for a few weeks produces a far more reliable schedule than any general rule.
When is the best time of year for clearance?
Late August through September for summer goods and outdoor furniture, and early January for holiday and winter merchandise. These are the deepest cuts of the year because stores must clear floor space on a fixed calendar.
What does a .97 price ending mean at Costco?
It generally indicates a manager markdown rather than a national promotion. Combined with an asterisk in the corner of the shelf tag, which means the item isn’t being restocked, it’s the clearest clearance signal among major retailers.
Is clearance pricing the same at every store in a chain?
Not at Home Depot, where the same item routinely carries different clearance prices at different stores in the same city. That variation is store-level inventory management and it’s the most exploitable pattern the chain has. It’s less pronounced at chains with more centralized pricing.