A guide to Online Shopping: Sample and Flash sale sites

Online shopping has been a new addiction of mine ever since I began following other bloggers and youtube gurus. While I haven't necessarily bought from all these sites here are the most popular sample sale or flash sale sites. Sample sales are not easily accessible to those of us not living in New York City or in California so these online flash sales are the next best thing. Stay tuned for more in the series A guide to Online here!

Sample Sale/ Flash sale sites: 
Hautelook: Hautelook is a flash site started by the department store Nordstroms. In my opinion  Hautelook often has the best selection of name brands for cheap. There generally isn't any true designer sales on Hautelook however it does have incredible beauty sales with brands such as Lorac, Urban decay, The Balm etc. Hautelook however does allow returns within 21 days of the order.

Ruelala: Ruelala in my opinion has a better selection of true "designer" brands compared to Hautelook however it does lack in the beauty sales. Ruelala has varying degrees of return policy but mostly is final sale.

Gilt: The original flash sale site opened in November of 2007. It was modeled off of the successful french flash sale site Vente-Privee which actually just opened a branch in the United States. In the beginning many designer brands could be seen on the site such as Ralph Lauren purple brand back in 2009 but as more players have entered the market it has dried the resources up. Increasingly more and more "unknown" brands are entering Gilt.