Anxiety crept in as I surveyed the coliseum floor from above. Table after table, piled with eye-catching items ranging from handbags and luggage to shoes and dog beds, lined the 108,000- square-foot space. Although I had a map with numbered tables, and bright, metallic balloons identified product categories like backpacks and purses, I felt completely overwhelmed on my first visit to the annual Vera Bradley outlet sale.
The stories I’d heard about the sale, where retired and overstock items are discounted up an average of 70 percent, hadn’t helped. One person called the event “Black Friday on steroids.” Another told me to watch out for flying elbows. And someone else warned me not to come between any shopper and the Vera Bradley item they coveted.
I have to admit I wasn’t a massive Vera Bradley fan before the sale. In fact, I initially confused Vera Bradley with Vera Wang. A friend corrected me. While Vera Wang designs haute couture for celebrities, Vera Bradley sells bright, patterned accessories for everyday people, such as teachers and nurses, according to Vera Bradley co-founder Barbara Bradley Baekgaard.
The brand owes its distinct style to a long layover that Baekgaard spent in Atlanta with her friend Pat Miller in 1982. As the two shared M&M’s and flipped through fashion magazines, they noticed everyone — men and women — carried the same black luggage. What the airport needed, they decided, was a splash of color.
Back home, Baekgaard and Miller pooled $500 together for a trip to JoAnn Fabrics and got to work cutting Simplicity sewing patterns on the family ping-pong table in Baekgaard’s basem*nt. Then, they sent Baekgaard’s daughters to college with their duffel bags, which became an instant hit with the girls’ sorority sisters. In the first year, Baekgaard and Miller sold $10,000 worth of product. Two years later, their sales topped $1 million.
Today, the company named in honor of Baekgaard’s mother has roughly 3,000 employees and annual sales of nearly $500,000 million. It was never about the money, according to Baekgaard. She says the endeavor was always about having fun, something she tries to weave throughout the Vera Bradley organization.
The Vera Bradley annual outlet annual sale started in 1986.
Whether calculated or not, the Fort Wayne, Indiana-based company’s influence spills into the local community. Harry Cunningham, a former Vera Bradley employee and founder of goodMRKT, a store that sells products from approximately 80 purpose-driven brands, says that Baekgaard and Miller’s story inspires Fort Wayne’s entrepreneurial spirit. Similarly, artist and public art consultant Alex Hall says Vera Bradley builds community by attracting creative people to Fort Wayne.
There are other ways the Vera Bradley brand impacts the community, such as the Vera Bradley Foundation. Founded in 1998 following the death of one of the company’s first sales representatives, Mary Sloan, the non-profit group raises funds for breast cancer research to improve treatments. To date, the foundation has raised nearly $39 million.
A day before the sale, I met Baekgaard for breakfast at her downtown boutique hotel, The Bradley, to learn her story — and maybe garner a few tips for how to navigate the infamous outlet sale. She told me that she continues to be amazed by how much people love the brand. For example, she shared the story of four sisters who never liked any of their brother’s girlfriends until one showed up carrying a Vera Bradley purse. According to Baekgaard, they knew from her handbag that the girlfriend was a down-to-earth, good fit for their brother.
The sale’s average discount is 70 percent off.
Baekgaard said that the sale began in 1986 when the company had several overstock items. At the time, she and Miller simply set up a tent and sold what they could. By 2005, they were selling out all of the retired and overstock items they could at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum. The following year, demand was so strong that Vera Bradley had to put a cap on the dollar amount you could spend at the sale. It’s currently maxed out at $3,500.
When I asked Baekgaard for advice on how to tackle the sale, she reached for her purse — a Vera Bradley, of course — and fished out a business card. One side read, “The ‘Barb’ Card.” On the other side was printed, “Cuz She Said So!” Tongue in cheek, she told me to just hand it to anyone at the sale if I needed anything. Or, she suggested playfully, I could use it to get out of a parking ticket.
Shifting to a more serious tone, Baekgaard recommended taking my time to see all the available items before diving in. What should I be looking for, I asked. She suspected the most popular items at this year’s affair would be the blankets, handbags, and small, giftable items like cosmetic bags. If I had any questions while at the sale, I could always just ask her. “I’ll be there,” she said. “You couldn’t keep me away. I flew back from New York specifically for this.”
The sale takes place across 108,000 square feet of space.
The next morning, the first day of the sale, I arrived at about 9:30 a.m. From a vantage point above the coliseum floor, I could see the overflowing tables as well as row after row of stacked boxes hidden from attendees by a curtain. It took 42 tractor-trailers to haul in the items, and shoppers could wait over an hour to check out, according to Nathan Dennison, the coliseum’s vice president of sales.
Although typically held in the spring, this year’s event — the first since the pandemic — was organized over five days in June. The first three days consisted of four ticketed sessions lasting two-and-a-half hours each. (Tickets for each session cost $6.) At the end of each period, the sales floor was cleared of shoppers, and staff spent the next 30 minutes tidying and restocking tables. The final two days were non-ticketed.
In total, Vera Bradley expected more than 40,000 people to attend the sale, including busloads of shoppers from neighboring states, according to Greg Jaeger, director of brand marketing for the company. He noted that people from 45 states had purchased session tickets.
Sale items range from backpacks to dog beds.
As my group waited for the first session of the first day to end, we were held in a space where a DJ entertained budding shoppers, playing festive music and awarding prizes for having traveled the longest distance and other categories. We eventually made our way to the sales floor.
After the doors opened, people filed in briskly but orderly without shoving or flying elbows. Most seemed giddy as an upbeat soundtrack played, and I remembered Baekgaard describing the shoppers who make the trip to the annual extravaganza as a “sisterhood.” Based on what I saw, I had to agree.
Gini Turnbull of Hicksville, Ohio, was sorting through her finds within 20 minutes of the session opening. She told me that she attends every year with three friends, and they treat the event as a girlfriend getaway.
Another woman, Rebecca Mularski of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, was attending with her mother, grandmother, aunt, and cousin for the first time. She was wearing a pink shirt specifying the items she was in charge of procuring for her group. “We were very prepared this year for the sale and bringing it all home,” Mularski said. “My aunt actually figured out the cubic footage of her luggage.”
Shoppers can spend up to $3,500 at the sale.
While I’m not really into the bright floral and paisley patterns that dominate Vera Bradley’s collection, a few pieces did catch my eye. I spotted a tan leather handbag similar to the ones I pay a premium for at department stores. At 70 percent off, it only cost $45. It was at that moment I understood the popularity of the annual outlet sale.
I may never study the coliseum floor layout like Turnbull or do the math to determine how much I can stuff in my suitcase like Mularski’s aunt, but I do have a college roommate who lives nearby. Next year, maybe I’ll suggest we meet up for the sale.
Teresa Bitler is a Phoenix-based writer who has contributed to Fodor’s, USA Today, Atlas Obscura, TripSavvy, and Sunset. Follow her on Instagram at @teresa.bitler.
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