How to Maximize Your Savings on Carter’s Baby Clothes

This post is sponsored by Carter’s; however, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

I have friends who are all gung-ho about buying secondhand items. They love to hit up garage sales, people from local For-Sale Facebook groups, and local or online consignment shops. I myself have found some great things here and there from these venues. But, when it comes to buying baby clothes or clothes for my older children, I don’t understand the appeal of buying clothes secondhand.

It has been my experience that you can buy brand new baby clothes for the same price as used baby clothes. While I think buying used is still great for many reasons, like wanting to limit consumer waste, to score a cute vintage-styled clothing article they don’t make anymore, or to pick up an enormous quantity of clothes for very little (like a giant box of baby boy clothes for $20, for example), it doesn’t make sense to my frugal self: brand new clothes last longer than used, look nicer, and can be purchased inexpensively.

My husband and I have discovered some great places to score brand new baby clothes for secondhand prices. One of our new favorite places to shop is at Carter’s. It helps that they have an outlet store very close to us (Locate a Carter’s near you).

We’ve always loved Carter’s baby clothes because they tend to fit our taller, yet leaner babies, better than many other baby brands, and last a long time. We’ve handed down many of our twins’ Carter’s baby girl clothes to our new baby. Plus, Carter’s baby clothes are adorable, pair well with themselves, and make it easy to mix and match tops and bottoms. We’ve greatly enjoyed picking up a new items for our children there over the last year or so.

What makes Carter’s great is of course the high value. We get great new baby clothes for a low price. As a very frugal mamma, it’s my favorite!

Here’s how to maximize your savings at Carter’, that go beyond using Carter’s coupons.

How to Score New Carter’s Baby Clothes for Less

Rewarding Moments from Carter’s | Oshkosh B’Gosh

For every $1 you spend in a Carter’s store, you earn one point. For every 75 points, or $75 spent, you earn $10 in rewards, online and in store. It’s one of the best rewards programs I have seen. It’s super easy to spend $75 in one trip, well, at least for me because I have multiple children to clothe, including twins, who need double the amount of clothing in the same size (lucky me!).  And I can rack up points at both Carter’s and Oshkosh B’Gosh.

Store Coupons, Sales, and Doorbusters

Carter’s is always running sales. Their doorbusters are awesome. We recently picked up new shorts for my 3 year old that were only $8 each! Last weekend they ran a Buy 1 Pair, Get 1 Pair of Shoes Free doorbuster event. They switch up all the time and are always tremendous deals.  They also will do things like “Take an extra 40% off clearance” sale which are my favorites.

Each month you can use two great Carter’s coupons: 25% off your purchase of $40+ or 15% off your entire purchase, though they don’t work on clearance or doorbuster items.

Because they regularly run huge sales on their baby clothes , and their clothes are affordably priced to start with, you can still use those coupons on most of your order and get things even cheaper. Items are regularly marked 40-60% off and can then have their store coupon applied to the purchase.

ShopKick App

I have been using this app for around two years now, and it works amazing for saving even more money on Carter’s Baby Clothes!

ShopKick is a mobile phone app that rewards you for walking into certain stores, scanning certain items in store, and for making purchases at participating stores. Carter’s is one of their partnered stores!

You can get up to 50 kicks for simply walking into a Carter’s store, and 1 kick for every $1 spent there. Plus, you get 150 bonus kicks if you spend $30, 350 bonus kicks if you spend $50, and a bonus of 650 kicks if you spend $75.

So, for entering a Carter’s store and making a $75 purchase there, you earn 775 kicks from the ShopKick app, which equals about $3.10 in gift card value, or 4.14% cash back! (See this post for more details on how Shopkick works).

*If you aren’t shopping in store, but online, be sure to shop through a cash back website like Ebates, Upromise, or TopCashBack where you can earn 2.5-6% cash back! 

Use a Cash Back Rewards Credit Card

To really up the savings, use a cash back credit card, or other store credit card. We have a few different ones that we like to use when making purchases on clothes. It helps us continue to stack on the savings even if we only earn 1-2% cash back or store credit to a different store. By small and simple things are great things brought to pass! This only works if you pay the credit card off in full every month though.

How the Savings at Carter’s breaks down

Okay, let’s say you pick up several items that are all 50% off at Carter’s, but not on clearance or doorbuster, and they total $93.75 after the sale, but before taxes.  You present your 20% off $40+ purchase coupon in store, and your clothes are now exactly $75. You’ve now earned $10 off your next shopping trip to Carter’s. You complete the transaction using your ShopKick-linked, 1% cash back credit card, and earn 775 kicks for the purchase and walk-in credit, and an additional $0.75 cash back on your credit card.

With all those discounts, sales, and rewards added together, you scored $187.50 worth of brand new baby clothing for only $61.15 (before tax). Assuming you picked up 10-15 items, each item only cost you between $4.08-$6.12!

That there is why I like buying brand new clothes versus secondhand clothes. I can buy, quality, nice, adorable, new baby clothes for the same price as used, as long as I shop at Carter’s!

So, tell me, do you also prefer to buy new baby clothes?  

Carter’s/Oshkosh B’gosh partners with bloggers such as me to help promote their Baby Clothes Landing Page. As part of the program, I received compensation. CARTER’S believes that consumers and bloggers are free to form their own opinions and share them in their own words. CARTER’S provided me with information on promotions and messaging concepts, but did not tell me what to write in my blog or what to say about the products I use.