What not to buy on the road
Price gaps have a direction, and the assumption that travel makes things cheaper is the most expensive mistake on this site. Each of the six below runs the wrong way for a structural reason, not a seasonal one — these do not become good buys during a sale.
-
01
Imported apparel, bags and shoes in Japan
Import duty, importer margin and consumption tax stack up to 1.3–2× the brand's home-market price. The weak yen does not help — imports reprice upward with a lag. In Japan, buy what Japan makes.
-
02
Airport duty-free
"Duty-free" is not "cheapest". For cosmetics and spirits in particular, downtown drugstores and big-box retailers routinely beat airport pricing even after tax. Treat duty-free as a benchmark to check against, not as the answer.
-
03
"Traditional crafts" in tourist districts
Tourist-district pricing runs two to three times the source, and imported product is routinely mixed in and sold as local work. An hour on a train to the actual production town solves both problems at once.
-
04
Luxury watches in Switzerland
Counter-intuitive but consistent: authorised dealers price uniformly worldwide, so there is no home-market discount to capture. Markets with deep grey and secondhand supply — Japan, Hong Kong — are frequently cheaper. The Swiss advantage is usually just the VAT refund.
-
05
Appliances with voltage or warranty exposure
Japan runs at 100V, the US at 120V, Europe at 230V. A domestic-market appliance simply will not work at home, and a step-up transformer is not a safe fix for anything that heats. Even where the voltage works, a domestic-only warranty turns any failure into a total loss.
-
06
The opening price in a bargaining market
Turkish rugs, Moroccan leather, Southeast Asian night markets. Opening asks commonly run two to five times the closing price, and the gap is largest for buyers who are visibly foreign and visibly in a hurry. If you are not going to haggle, a fixed-price shop is cheaper in the end.
Common questions
Is airport duty-free actually cheaper?
Often not. Duty-free removes tax but airport retail carries high concession rents, and competitive downtown retailers frequently sell the same cosmetics and spirits for less even with tax included. Check the city price before you assume the airport is a saving.
Are watches cheaper in Switzerland?
Generally no. Swiss brands set recommended retail prices globally and authorised dealers hold to them, so there is no home-market discount. After the VAT refund you may save around 8%, but markets with deep grey-market and secondhand supply, notably Japan and Hong Kong, frequently beat that on the same reference.