We bought the same school supply list at four retailers. The cheapest was 38% below the most expensive.
The list came from a real fourth-grade classroom. Store brands closed most of the gap, and one category — backpacks — accounted for a third of the difference on its own.
- Identical 23-item list ranged from $61 to $99 across four retailers
- The backpack alone accounted for about a third of the spread
- Store-brand supplies were 30% cheaper and performed identically in our checks
We took a real fourth-grade supply list — 23 items, specified by brand where the teacher specified one — and bought it at four retailers in the same week.
The total ranged from $61 to $99, a spread of 38 percent. The cheapest was a warehouse club; the most expensive, a general merchandise chain in a high-rent location.
The backpack is the decision
One item accounted for about a third of the entire spread. Backpacks ranged from $18 to $52 across the four stores, for bags whose construction we could not meaningfully distinguish by inspection.
We ran a simple durability check on all four: loading each to 12 pounds and carrying it for a week. Every bag survived. The two failures we would predict — zipper pulls and the seam where the shoulder strap meets the body — showed no wear on any of them in a week, which is precisely why a week-long test cannot tell you what a year will.
Buy the bag with the best-attached straps and a replaceable zipper pull. That is most of what durability means in this category.— A repair shop owner who mends bags for a living
Where store brands win and lose
Store-brand supplies averaged about 30 percent below the named brands and performed identically in our checks for pencils, folders, loose-leaf paper, glue sticks and scissors.
Two categories were different. Store-brand dry-erase markers dried out noticeably faster in an open-cap test. And store-brand colored pencils laid down visibly less pigment, which matters for a child doing art and not at all for one labeling a diagram.
- List: 23 items from a real fourth-grade classroom list
- Range: $61 to $99 across four retailers in one week
- Backpacks: $18 to $52, about a third of the total spread
- Store brands: about 30% cheaper; equivalent except markers and colored pencils
One note on the lists themselves. Nine of the 23 items on this list are classroom supplies rather than personal ones — tissues, sanitizer, paper for shared use — which means families are effectively covering a classroom budget line. That is worth knowing when comparing what different schools ask for.
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