"Their eyes are just sparkling," said Megan Narouz, as she and her husband, Peter, led their three youngsters – each with an enviable budget of $400 – through the heaving crowds of Pitt Street Mall on Boxing Day.
The family experienced the Boxing Day sales madness in the CBD for the first time on Friday, as the shops in their hometown of Wagga Wagga must remain shut on the public holiday.
"We're all cashed up with Christmas money, and the kids have made a list of what they want. It's what they had on the Christmas wishlist," she said, pointing to the bags emblazoned with "JB Hi-Fi", "Peter Alexander" and "Nike" being carried by Estelle, Isaac and Lachlan, aged between 11 and 15.
"Lachlan wanted a pair of Air Jordans, but they're not small enough, so he'll have to wait a couple of years," Ms Narouz said with a laugh.
The Narouz family will be heading home for the new year, but Myer boss Bernie Brookes has various strategies to keep other shopping enthusiasts returning for more.
"If you open with a sale and finish with the same sale four weeks later, you're not getting any benefit from it," he said, as thick swarms of shoppers walked past on the cosmetics floor.
"So we're going to post different offers – offers that run for today, offers that run for two days, we have first week offers."
Customers were "reserved" in the "very patchy" retail environment, but Mr Brookes anticipates $200 million of stock will be cleared nationally in the next four weeks.
The homeware category, especially kitchen and dining ware, was the stellar Boxing Day performer at Myer.
"People are really restocking their homeware cupboards, and a lot of saucepan sets particularly, all the way to crockery and cutlery," he said.
Two of the cut-price pans were snapped up by Alice and Augustin Bunel, both 30, newly arrived from Paris and in the midst of decking out their Surry Hills flat.
They started their Myer spree at 5.30am, and three hours later, were hauling goods worth thousands of dollars to the train station.
"Just on the forks, knives and spoons, we saved $700," said Mrs Bunel, standing between giant Ikea totes and a wheelie bag. "They were expensive ones, but one was from a brand from Paris and we wanted to have it here."
Anna McPhee, head of the Australian National Retailers Association, said growing consumer confidence, cheaper petrol prices and low interest rates will see this year's post-Christmas spending hit $18 billion by mid-January, exceeding that of last year.
She said deep discounting and early online clearance sales in the lead-up to Christmas had not diminished the Boxing Day sales fervour at bricks and mortar stores.
The volume of sales via Myer's website in the first week of the stocktake sale is expected to match what the online store can typically hit in four weeks, Mr Brookes said.
Big savings are also being found on eBay and Gumtree, where slews of new but unwanted Christmas gifts are being listed, such as a Louis Vuitton handbag for $599, Bang and Olufsen speakers for $1200 and a laser hair removal device for $200, down from $800.
Gumtree saw a 25 per cent increase in the number of listing post-Christmas, a spokeswoman said. "There are quite a few tents and campervans up for sale, suggesting that perhaps people are saying farewell to the holiday season."
David Jones' newly installed chief executive, Iain Nairn, said the retailer had sold nearly $1 million of goods in the first hour.
He aims to turn over stock faster than ever before by offering deeper discounts, under Woolworths South Africa's plan to "transform" the department store in the next 12 months.
"We had 80 per cent off $60 million worth of stock and most of that has now gone," he said. "Designer handbags and shoes by far are the most popular items."
As the Pitt Street mall crowd swelled and the sun blazed, dozens of men young and old lifted their feet and found rest under the trees, minding their bags and those obviously of their partners.
On the advice of his older brother, 18-year-old Justin Tran from Strathfield came armed with a $10 aluminium folding stool.
"I was in Myer from 5am and sat down most of the time, they didn't mind," he said, while waiting for his sister-in-law outside Zara's flagship store. "I'll go to Superdry later."
