I think that the thread is slower because of a few things. First very few designers are participating in the sale anymore. It's more house brands with a few contemporary brands and very minimal designer brands. They used to have a Burberry scarf every sale, gone. They used to have high end handbags, gone. I remember getting a marc Jacobs quilted handbag for $600ish when it's normally $900. Even the contemporary handbags are mostly gone too.
Certain brands that were sale staples, gone. Like another posters mentioned north face, Patagonia, Tory Burch, ect all gone. I used to stock up on my spanx bras during the sale, they're gone from the sale.
The items in the sale are clearly made for the sale and not the same quality as their non sale counter parts.
They've also had so many blunders both on their IT end with website glitches. Along with their inventory tracking system has seemed to be virtually impossible for customers. In the past I recall being able to see locations near you had an item you wanted. Now it just offers for the item to be available for pickup at the location of your choice by x many days. This year's online glitch let people shop the sale early resulting in items being out of stock before the sale starts. Also the website will state things are out of stock but clearly in stock in store. But the day after the sale ends it's back in stock online. Then they end up with a much steeper discount in a few months after the sale.
I also think that they shot themselves in the foot when they started using influencers to promote the sale. They were given preferential treatment with early access shopping. Then once they are done with promoting the sale they did massive returns of the items that were promoting.
