It's that time of year again. Twice annually, German discount supermarket chain Aldi holds a sale on personal computers, and normally staid German consumers go a bit mad trying to angle one. The next such sale begins this week. The Aldi sale has taken on a cult quality since its inception in the mid-1990's.
Eager shoppers endure long lines and even camp out in front of the store on the eve of the sale.
In one notorious case in 1997, one customer reportedly threatened another with a gun in a scuffle over the last specimen on Aldi's store shelves. When second-quarter PC sales were lower than usual this year, it was largely because the discount chain held its legendary sale in the first rather then the second quarter, according to Thomas Reuner, European PC analyst with Dataquest in the U.K. Other vendors like Fujitsu and Siemens often time promotional sales around the Aldi sale, Reuner said. The mystique of the sale owes a lot to Aldi's image, more Russian bread-line than supermarket, where customers forage through products still stacked in cardboard shipping containers. Consumers don't give a hoot about glitzy presentation or large selection, just as long as the prices are rock-bottom. The cult has also been fed by the secretiveness of Aldi, which waits until the very last minute to release details of the sale, or releases them furtively to select computer publications.