The Swedish word for a sale, rea, often pops up in shop windows at different times of year. You may see be seeing signs around now for sommarrea and between Christmas and New Year signs for a mellandagsrea, and at the end of February, the bokrea ('book sale') takes place across the country.
Don't be alarmed if you see signs advertising a slutrea. This is not a sale featuring people 1950s moralists would describe as having "loose morals", rather a final sale, usually taking place at the end of the mellandagsrea.
Perhaps unsurprisingly in a bureaucratic country like Sweden, there are strict rules regulating sales. The word rea is only allowed in marketing under certain circumstances: sale items must be items the company usually sells (meaning that an item cannot be bought for the sole purpose of being put on sale), items must only be on sale for a limited time ‒ usually interpreted as no more than two months per year ‒ and the price must be substantially lower during the sale.
Since 2022, companies selling a product at a sale price must also show details of the price the product was previously being sold at ‒ or more specifically, the lowest price the product had been sold at during the last 30 days. This is in order to stop companies from hiking a price just before a sale only to cut it to the usual price for the item.
In addition to this, companies are not allowed to advertise a sale if they don't think they have enough of the item on sale to meet customer demand.
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Of course, this doesn't mean that companies don't break these rules. They just use other words to advertise sales which don't fit these criteria, such as erbjudande ("offer") or rabatt ("discount").
But where does the word rea come from?
Rea is short for realisation, which in turn describes the act of converting an act or service into money. The English verb "realise" - as in "to realise assets" - has the same meaning. This also explains the pronunciation of the word: rea is pronounced like "RAY-ah", as in the first two syllables of realisation.
A Swedish sale, therefore, is an event where a company can realise their products: they turn them into money.
If we're being pedantic, the act of selling any item is technically a realisation, as the item is being exchanged for money, but for some reason this meaning of the word "realise" in Swedish has come to specifically mean selling an item or service at a reduced price.
Example sentences:
Äntligen! Jag hittade hennes nya kokbok i bokrean, och till ett jättebra pris dessutom!
Finally! I found her new cookbook in the book sale, and for a really good price as well!
Hur kan det stämma att de alltid har rea på barnkläder? Det har de inte, det heter ett "medlemserbjudande" istället.
How can they always have a sale on kids clothes? They don't, they call it a "member offer" instead.