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I have been in a camping shop today talking to the manager and he mentioned that every few months they change their tents and he will have an Ex Display Kampa Studland Polycotton for sale in around June time for £699 - currently selling new ones for £939.

Is it just me or do you think that this is still quite expensive for a tent that hundreds of people have been in and out off and it has been pitched for about 3½ - 4 months.

In the good old days, tent dealers like ourselves who put up show models used to get a bit of discount for the one display tent, meaning that after it had done it's time on the display the retailer could reduce it quite considerably and would suit someone with a limited budget/new to camping.

These days, there are very few manufacturers who will help out these "display" dealers by reducing the demo model even more than a couple of percent, if at all.

Without wanting to make you all cry, margains are much less this year for the retailers and it is getting to a point where it won't be viable for dealers to have tent displays at all.

Kampa are one of the good guys, but rather than lose money on somthing that they've paid full whack for, its likely that the dealer will be trying to re-coup his outlay. :(

OutdoorExp

The dealer did mention when I was in talking to him that he did not know when he would be changing his display as he would have to wait and till Kampa sent him a new tent for his display before he could sell it - so they must get a decent discount otherwise why bother changing your display throughout the year.

Quote: Originally posted by ANGEDAWS on 18/5/2011

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.... As for a lot of the fabric life span being used up - surely not!!! If I was paying that much for a tent it would have to last me years. Our £200 Gelert tent that we bought 3 years ago is still going strong and I expect it to last at least another 2 or 3 seasons....

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Unfortunately, a standard 75 denier tent flysheet degrades under standard UV exposure within a season in an outdoor display - only being expected to last up to 4-6 months external use (some more and some less) before becoming brittle and delaminating. If you store it in a mid temperature, dark and dry environment then a couple of weeks camping a year should mean that you get plenty of years camping out of it. If it is used much more frequently and for longer trips its UV life will be used up quicker. If it has been in a display for several months, then you may have lost half if not more of its effective life - also an issue with second hand tents.

Kampa's ultimate range of tents use 100 denier flysheets which naturally have a much higher UV resistance, lasting potentially double the time. A relatively small increase in denier has a much greater effect on the UV resilience of the fabric. Kampa also add extra UV protection too. The cotton component in polycotton tents and pure cotton tents have even better natural UV resilience.