When I was the copywriter for Michaels stores (a couple of decades ago), I had an Excel document that had every product that had ever been on sale (with it's correct name), when it last was advertised, the most recent sale price/discount, and the ad copy. (Since the ads look like this, it was typically only a few words.)
It was many thousands of items. I was the sole person keeping it updated.
We really should have had a database.