talking trade
Monday February 4 2019 THE NATIONAL MOTORCYCLE MUSEUM, BIRMINGHAM
Black thoughts…
Industry commentator Michael Weedonshares his observations on how Black Friday has morphed from a one-day retail frenzy into a month-long period of discounting and deals
the department store group’s tills and etills. Sales of Home products at the department store
were up 2.3% for the week over the same week in 2017 - although the previous week’s sales had undershot those for the year before by -5.1%, suggesting to some that canny customers waited until Black Week before shelling out. Did I say Black Week? Surely some mistake. The
first teasers started to sneak into email inboxes during the week commencing Monday November 12. That would make it Black Fortnight at least. To qualify as Black Week it would have had to climax and stop on Black Friday itself. But it didn’t, did it? In
I
t’s now half a decade since Black Friday heralded the advent of a new spectator sport, when wrestling for flatscreen TVs in
supermarket aisles first appeared as a shock- horror favourite on news channels nationwide. Click on the latest streamed episode of the seasonal Salefest now and instead of crowds of rabid shoppers, restrained by burly security guards, we see images instead of a solitary early morning bargain hunter forming an orderly queue of one in a dark and chilly street, as tumbleweed blows quietly past. It’s a pity, if only because we’ve lost the dubious
entertainment value (about which we are shocked, I tell you, shocked!) of seeing adults fight for consumer durables. Those of enhanced age will remember similar scenes on black and white TV screens, with department store doors bursting under the weight of shoppers at the gates of dawn, all desperate to grab the one super-discounted fur coat available to those willing to camp out overnight on the pavement in anticipation of a fantastic bargain. Try achieving that with a fur coat these days. Figures from IMRG (the UK's industry association
for online retail) show that while online retail sales on the day itself - November 23 - clocked in at £1.49 billion, up 7.3% on 2017, this was short of an expected bump of 13.2%. The same source estimates that from Monday
(November 19) to Wednesday (November 21), electricals jumped year-on-year between 24% and 17%. Which suggests that Black Week, rather than just the Friday, is the relevant period to consider. Cookshop and Home had a good Black Week at
John Lewis & Partners in a record week (to Saturday November 24) that saw £379 million pass through
42 |
housewareslive.net
consumer body Which? pointed the finger at the whole event by revealing that 87% of Blackvember offers are no better than those available at other times of the year. The final reckoning will be fascinating. If, as looks
“ In a quickly established routine, Black Friday
smeared across the calendar to become Blackvember ”
a quickly established routine, Black Friday smeared across the calendar to become Blackvember. Given the already infinitely flexible Black Season, it was a bit of a surprise to see Cyber Monday (November 26) pop up on screen after the big weekend. This, we will recall, was the day that online
operators were supposed to get in on the festive flogging act, after the shops had done their in-store thing on the Friday. Some retailers simply gave up on Cyber Monday and declared the period Cyber Week, while simultaneously extending Black Friday into that same last week of the month – and on into December. The buy-right-now-while-stocks-last
psychological pressure of a one-day sale, whether on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, has been dissolved into a generalised month-long sale. That being the case, those offers had better be good - as shoppers have weeks now to decide whether and when to spend. To help them along, independent
•
HousewaresLive.net
likely, overall online sales growth in the day/week/fortnight/whatever was in single percentages, then it would confirm the developing picture of online sales growing by single digit increases. At a sustained Black Friday rate of 7%ish growth, online sales would take a whole decade to double to about a third of all retail. One thing which actually declined, though, was
the volume of Black Friday electronic spam. Looking at my own inbox, not only was the volume of promotional emails down on 2017 by about half, but what did come in was almost exclusively from retailers that I’ve bought things from in the past. Why? Could this be evidence that the advent of GDPR in May really has brought about a mass purge of spammy mail databases? Maybe not such a black day after all.
• Michael Weedon is chair of the FSB [Federation of Small Businesses] Retail and High Streets Policy Unit and managing director of exp2 Ltd, which carries out projects including research and report creation for clients in the retail industry, including data providers, place managers and individual retailers. He established exp2 in 2016 from a leading trade association role.
Michael’s contact details are: Mobile: 07411 763 551 Email:
Michael.weedon@exp2.co.uk Tw: @michaelweedon
•
twitter.com/Housewaresnews
December 2018
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
