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I went to the FTT sale with my husband so we were able to get two boxes!
First box - persimmon pumpkin braiser, persimmon pumpkin cocotte, nonstick bakeware muffin pan, nonstick bakeware loaf pan.
Second box - artichaut stoneware loaf pan, artichaut heritage pie dish, artichaut pumpkin cocotte, and artichaut 6.75 wide round dutch oven.
Yes. 3 pumpkins!
Final pic - what we took home from the mystery boxes. I traded the artichaut wide round for a peche one (I almost bought it inside but put it back at the end!), traded the persimmon pumpkin cocotte for an oyster 5qt braiser, then traded the oyster braiser for a thyme 6.75 qt wide round. Artichaut pumpkin cocotte traded for the cerise 5.5 round signature dutch oven. I did not try to trade the smaller items as I was ok with taking them home.
I got a lot of offers for the pumpkin braiser but nothing really jumped out at me so I decided to take it home in the end.
We spent about an hour in the sale, 15 minutes to check out and get the mystery boxes, then about an hour at Le Creuchella to trade. It was a great afternoon!
At the end of the last time slot, 50-100 of us were just handed all the same items, straight off the shelves we JUST shopped, because they ran out of mystery boxes. How do you run out when you know how many tickets you sold? Not to mention we all got the same exact colors of everything. Absolutely disheartening and took all the fun out of getting a VIP tickets and coming to shop. And we all spent the minimum to be met with something not even slightly comparable to what earlier sessions got in their gorgeous boxes of matching pieces. Edited to add: part of what they gave us to “make it right” was 2 of the $15 black tote bags at the checkout. What a joke. If anyone else had this experience at the end of the sale today, please comment what you plan to do. Hoping we can all have this made right.
I went to the Le Creuset factory sale in Düsseldorf today – and it was a complete disappointment.
The Mystery Boxes were completely gone within 30 minutes.
Even people in the first time slot barely had a chance.
Tickets were sold for slots between 3–7 pm, but if you weren’t there right at the start, you had zero possibility of getting a box. To me, this feels like nothing but a cash grab.
On top of that, the in-store prices weren’t even much better – in fact, many items were cheaper online. Examples:
Cast iron pan: €103 at the event, €98 online.
Dip bowls: €9 at the factory sale, €11 on Amazon – but there you can choose any color you want.
Even many pots were the same story, despite the supposed “-40 to -50%” discounts.
So the €6.50 “VIP ticket” was completely pointless. As a long-time customer, I found this really disappointing – I honestly wouldn’t recommend going to any future Le Creuset events. For comparison: Zwilling handled similar events much better, and their prices were actually good.