Compare at $99 Is in Missouri’s Rulebook: How Factory Outlets Actually Work in St. Louis
Revised November 10, 2026
Are outlet stores actually cheaper?
Usually cheaper than the same brand’s flagship, yes. Cheaper than the same quality somewhere else is a different question. Lawmakers who asked the FTC to look into outlets cited analysts estimating that upwards of 85% of outlet merchandise is made exclusively for outlets, so a lower price can come with a lower garment.
Keep reading ↓Compare at $99. Now $69. That exact tag is printed in Missouri’s rulebook. You’ve felt one swing off a sleeve on a tax-free weekend in August, St. Louis humidity still stuck to the back of your shirt from the parking lot, a kid already tugging you toward the shoe wall. And the crossed-out number did exactly what it was hung there to do. It made $69 feel like money you just found on the floor.
The rule is 15 CSR 60-7.060, one of the regulations the Missouri Attorney General enforces under the Merchandising Practices Act. It lists “Compare at $99, Now $69” as an example of a comparison to a competitor’s price, and it treats that crossed-out number as a claim a store has to be able to back up.
Here’s the short version. A “compare at” price has to be one the competitor actually sold or offered the product at within the 90 days before the ad. It has to be representative of prices in the trade area, not an isolated price. And the store has to disclose that the higher number wasn’t its own.
A “Regularly $99” tag gets a different test. The store should be able to show that at least 10% of its unit sales came at that price or higher, or that the item was offered at that price at least 40% of the time, over a stretch of 30 days to 12 months.
Then comes the sentence that matters most in an outlet. Under the same rule, a seller can’t make any price comparison where the product it’s selling materially differs in composition, grade or quality, style or design from the product it’s compared against, unless it clearly discloses the difference.
This city used to read seams for a living. St. Louis’s own preservation plan says garment companies developed on Washington Avenue to meet growing markets spurred by the new mail-order retail business, and the street still wears the memory. A zipper-and-stitch paving pattern runs down the center of Washington Avenue, highlighted at night by LED-lit buttons. Walk it after dark and you’re standing on a seam. So read the one in your hand like a St. Louisan would.
Turn the shirt inside out and look at the shoulder seam. There’s a folded strip of spare fabric hiding in there, the seam allowance, and on some shirts it runs wide enough that a tailor could let the whole thing out. On others it’s a thin lip, trimmed close and locked down with an overlock stitch, because fabric costs money and nobody building that shirt ever expected it to be altered.
Both of those shirts can carry the same logo. One was built for a department store and ended up marked down. The other may have been built from the start for the outlet channel. When members of Congress asked the FTC to look into outlet marketing, they wrote that outlets historically offered excess inventory and slightly damaged goods, and that some analysts now estimate upwards of 85% of the merchandise sold in outlet stores was manufactured exclusively for them. Nobody mentions that at the register.
So what do you do with a tag that doesn’t add up? You don’t need to argue with anybody at the counter. Take a photo of the tag and the care label, and keep the receipt. The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Hotline is 1-800-392-8222, there’s no fee to file a complaint, and the office keeps a St. Louis location at 815 Olive Street, Suite 200 (314-340-6816). Send copies, never originals.
And if the trip can wait for August, let it wait. Missouri’s Back-to-School Sales Tax Holiday begins on the first Friday in August and runs through the following Sunday, and any article of clothing with a taxable value of $100 or less is exempt from state and local sales tax. For a family buying a year of kids’ jeans, that weekend is the real sale.
This isn’t a where-to-go list. For that, our guide to discount stores and outlets across the St. Louis metro sorts store types by what you’re buying. What follows is how the word outlet works, how to read a garment in a minute, and what to ask before you pay.
Are outlet stores actually cheaper?
Usually cheaper than the same brand’s flagship, yes. Cheaper than the same quality somewhere else is a different question. Lawmakers who asked the FTC to look into outlets cited analysts estimating that upwards of 85% of outlet merchandise is made exclusively for outlets, so a lower price can come with a lower garment.
Three separate things share the word. A genuine factory or company store, meaning the brand’s own shop clearing its own overstock, discontinued colors, cancelled orders and flawed pieces. A purpose-built outlet channel, meaning brand-run stores in an outlet center carrying merchandise produced for them. And the plain clearance rack inside an ordinary store, which isn’t an outlet at all, no matter what the banner above it says.
Walk into the first kind and the math is easy, because you’re buying the garment the brand meant to sell at full price, minus a flaw or a season. The second kind is where the reading has to happen. Same logo, different build, fair price for what it is, as long as you know what it is.
What does “made for outlet” actually mean?
It means the brand manufactured that item for its discount stores rather than sending it there after the fact. The product is genuine. It was simply designed to a different cost. The same congressional letter put it bluntly: outlet-specific merchandise is often of lower quality than goods sold at non-outlet retail locations, and while some retailers use different brand names and labels to tell the two apart, others don’t.
Sit with the supply problem a second. A factory store can only sell as many seconds as the factory produces, and a brand running a whole network of discount locations needs a steady flow that leftover stock can’t supply. So the flow gets made on purpose, around a target ticket price instead of around the flagship design.
Where can that cost target show up? Lighter fabric. Fewer pattern pieces, meaning fewer seams to sew. Simpler pockets, a thinner lining or none, plastic where you’d expect metal. A slightly looser stitch that nobody notices on the hanger and everybody notices after a season in the washer. None of it is counterfeit. It’s a second product line sharing a name.
How do you read a garment in your own hands?
Turn it inside out and check five things: the seam allowance, the stitch density, the fabric weight, the interior finishing, and how the buttons are attached. No tools. About a minute a piece, less once you’ve done it a few times, and the pattern across a whole rack starts jumping out at you.
Seams and stitch density
Pinch a seam and pull gently across it. A dense seam barely opens and shows no daylight between stitches. More stitches inside the same inch means a slower, stronger seam, and a fingernail can feel it. Then look at the allowance. Wide means fabric was spent. Narrow, trimmed and serged tight means fabric was saved. Neither is a defect on its own. It tells you where the garment sits.
Fabric weight and hand
Bunch a handful and let go. Heavier cloth falls back into shape; thin cloth stays creased and shows the shadow of your hand. Hold a pale piece toward a ceiling light and watch how much comes through the weave. That one test separates a sweater that keeps its shape from one that hangs limp by spring.
The inside of the garment
Check the parts you were never meant to see. Is the inside of the collar clean, or are there loose threads and a raw edge? Is the pocket bag decent cloth, or gauze you could read through? Cheap interiors are the fastest tell going, because the inside is the first place a cost target lands.
Buttons, zippers and pattern matching
Tug every button. One sewn through with a cross of thread and a knot underneath will outlast one tacked on flat. Run a zipper twice and feel for the catch. On stripes or plaids, look where the front placket meets the body and see whether the lines carry across the join. Matching a pattern wastes fabric, so it gets cut first, and you can spot it from across the store.
Read the tag the way Missouri reads it
The wording on the sign isn’t decoration. Missouri’s rule sorts it into kinds. “Regularly $99, Now $69” and “Originally $99, Now $69” are comparisons to the seller’s own former price. “Compare at $99, Now $69” and “Comparable value $99, Our price $69” are comparisons to a competitor’s price, which is why that kind of tag is supposed to come with a note that the higher number wasn’t the store’s own.
Any percent-off figure follows from whichever top number the store picked. A bigger percentage is evidence of a bigger starting number, nothing else.
So build one habit. Cover the top line with your thumb and look only at what you’d actually hand over. Would you buy this piece at that price with no sign, no crossed-out figure, no math? If yes, buy it. If the answer depends on the discount, the discount is doing your thinking for you.
Irregulars, seconds and how they get marked
A real factory store sells flawed goods on purpose, and the honest ones label it. Look for a second tag, a stamp reading IRR or IRREGULAR, a label with a corner snipped off, or a marker line drawn straight through the brand name. That last one exists so the piece can never be walked into a full-price store and returned as new.
Ask the clerk where the flaw is. It’s an ordinary question in a store that sells seconds, and the answer is usually specific, because somebody already found it and graded it. A dye lot slightly off. A skipped stitch. A pocket set a little high. Those are worth buying.
Some flaws aren’t cosmetic, and the fitting room is where you catch them. A side seam that wanders will make a shirt twist on your body. A collar that refuses to lie flat never will. Put it on, lift your arms, then look at yourself from the side under that unforgiving fitting-room light.
Why can the same model number be two different garments?
Because brands can run separate product codes for separate channels, and two versions can share a family name while differing underneath. The care label is the better tell, since fabric content and country of manufacture are printed facts, and reading them is the fastest comparison you’ve got on the spot.
Try it with something you already own. Pull up the brand’s own product page on your phone, then read the content label in your hand. A cotton blend against all cotton is a different garment. So is a different weight of denim, a different insulation fill, a different shell. The logo reads the same either way, which is why the label matters more than the logo does.
Label before logo works on services too, like finding a dog walker in St. Louis.
When is an outlet almost always the better buy?
Basics and staples you already know your size in. Plain tees, socks, kids’ jeans, athletic shorts, undershirts, a second pair of the chinos already hanging in your closet. Most of the risk in outlet buying is the gap between what you pictured and what you got, and a repeat purchase closes that gap almost entirely.
This is where buying multiples earns its keep. You own the sweatshirt, so you know how it washes and how the neck holds up. Buy a few. The made-for-outlet question carries less weight on a garment that’s mostly fabric and a couple of seams, because a trimmed spec has fewer places to hide. Kids’ clothes count double: jeans that get outgrown before the knees wear through never needed to survive a decade.
When is an outlet usually the wrong place to buy?
One expensive item you haven’t compared anywhere else. A winter coat, a suit, boots, a leather bag. These are exactly the purchases where a difference in build costs you real money over time, and the outlet setting squeezes the decision into the single afternoon you already drove out for.
Anything you plan to have altered belongs here too. Go back to that seam allowance. A garment built with narrow allowances can’t be let out, and your tailor will tell you so after you’ve paid. Check what there is to work with before the register. Our piece on how to shop for clothes in St. Louis goes deeper on fit and fabric if that’s the part you want more of.
The drive is part of the price
Outlet centers tend to get built where land is cheaper and a highway interchange is close, which in a metro shaped like this one usually means away from the middle of it. That distance is a real line item even though no sign prints it. Gas, a long drive, and lunch, because you’ll be out through lunch, eating a pretzel in a food court with bags cutting into your fingers.
Then the quiet pressure that shows up around the third store, when a whole morning is gone and you still haven’t bought anything. That feeling moves more merchandise than any window display does. So treat the trip like a trip. Write the list at the kitchen table, say a number out loud, then go. If the list doesn’t fill, drive home with an empty trunk and count it a win. Trading time for price is a fine trade when you like it, which is the appeal of flea market shopping around St. Louis as well, just with a different kind of digging.
What should you ask at the register?
Three questions, all of them completely normal. Can this be returned, and by what date? Does it have to come back to this store, or will any location or the website take it? And is anything on this receipt marked final sale?
A return window is part of the price. It stands between a wrong guess and a wasted purchase, and outlet locations sometimes run tighter policies than the brand’s regular stores. Final sale means the risk moved to you at the counter. Fine on a pack of socks. On a coat you tried on over the wrong shirt, it’s the difference between a deal and a closet ornament.
Tax-free weekend, per-tag math
Missouri’s Back-to-School Sales Tax Holiday runs from the first Friday in August through the following Sunday, and each article of clothing with a taxable value of $100 or less skips state and local sales tax. The Department of Revenue’s own example: $98 jeans qualify, but a $114 sweater is taxed on its full cost. What moves your bill is the price on each tag, not the cart total.
One more detail from the Department of Revenue’s holiday FAQ that belongs in every parent’s back pocket: if you buy an eligible item during the holiday and later exchange it for another eligible item of equal or less value, no tax is due, even if the exchange happens after the holiday ends. So the wrong size isn’t a disaster. Just ask whether a snipped label or a final-sale stamp changes what you can do later, before you pay. The person at the register knows the policy cold.
Making the list for your next outlet run? Browse factory outlets across the St. Louis metro on St Louis Near Me Directory, pick the two or three that carry what’s actually on your list, and check the labels before the logos.
If you’re the factory store, the resale shop or the family boutique with real markdowns, the customers who read labels this closely are exactly the ones worth winning, and they’re searching for honest stores right now. Put your store where they look.
Frequently asked questions
Are clothes at outlets cheaper quality?
Sometimes, and it depends which kind of outlet you’re standing in. A factory store clearing overstock and seconds sells the garment the brand built for full price. A purpose-built outlet channel often carries product made for it, and the lawmakers who asked the FTC to investigate wrote that outlet-specific merchandise is often of lower quality than goods sold at regular stores. Turn the piece inside out and the build will tell you which one you have.
What are the downsides of outlet shopping?
The drive, first, since outlet centers tend to sit away from the core and the trip costs gas and most of a day before you save a thing. After that: made-for-outlet stock that isn’t the flagship garment, compare-at signs you can’t check on the spot, tighter or final-sale return policies, and the sunk-cost pull that makes you buy something once you’ve come all that way.
Is it worth going to an outlet?
It’s worth it when you go with a list of things you already buy and already know your size in. Basics, staples, a replacement for something you own and like, ideally on Missouri’s back-to-school tax-holiday weekend. It stops being worth it when the trip itself is the plan and the list gets written in the parking lot.
Are outlet stores fake or real?
Usually the worry isn’t fakes. What people are sensing when they ask is something else: some outlet merchandise is made specifically for that channel, and the lawmakers who asked the FTC to look into outlets noted that some retailers label it differently while others don’t. So a garment can carry the real brand without being identical to the flagship version. Authenticity isn’t the risk here. Spec is.
How can I spot fake items at outlet shops?
Inside a store the brand itself runs, fakes are rarely the problem; spec is. Read the care label for fiber content and country of manufacture, check the stitching and hardware, and compare against the brand’s own product page on your phone. If a deal from an unfamiliar seller looks far below even the outlet’s own ticket, walk away.
What’s the difference between a factory store and an outlet store?
A factory or company store is the brand clearing its own goods: overstock, discontinued colors, cancelled orders and flawed seconds out of its own production. An outlet store in an outlet center is a brand-run discount shop whose shelves get stocked deliberately, often with merchandise made for that channel. The two phrases get used interchangeably on signs, so the store name won’t tell you. The tags and the build will.
Written by a dedicated team of St. Louis locals who live, work, and play right here in the St. Louis metro. Founder Lane Forman and team are committed to building the region’s most trusted directory by verifying listings and connecting local businesses with loyal customers across Missouri and Illinois.