What to expect from Black Friday 2015

Black Friday is exactly a month away today and it’s going to be especially interesting this year. After the surprise of Black Friday 2014, retailers are going to have spent months planning for 2015 for everything from the promotions themselves to the logistical nightmare of getting everything shipped.

As far back as January, Andy Street the head of John Lewis was calling for his fellow high street retailers to rein back on Black Friday saying that it’s not in the interest of retailers to grow Black Friday at the expense of other weeks in the run up to Christmas.

There’s little point in cannibalising sales which are going to happen anyway before Christmas by discounting across your entire portfolio. This year it’s likely that retailers are already saving up their excess stock and it’ll be strategically marked down products that we’ll see in the sales.

Clothing and shoes are likely to see heavy discounting, with the unseasonably warm weather in October this year, sales of heavy knitwear and winter coats just haven’t happened. People have been walking around town centres in lightweight summer clothing, although now the clocks have changed and the evenings are drawing in that may change. Retailers have large stocks of winter clothing to shift however, so expect to see deep discounts.

With Salmon predicting the UK’s first ever £1 billion retail day, most retailers aren’t going to ignore Black Friday and you can expect the likes of John Lewis (despite their reservations), Argos, Currys, Tesco, Asda (let’s hope there’s no fights this year) all to be running promotions. The online world won’t be left out with Amazon leading the way and the likes of ASOS running promotions across their whole range.

Doddle CEO, Tim Robinson thinks the spike is going to start sooner than expected saying “Retailers are likely to discount earlier than Black Friday but spread the offers over a longer period of time to try and avoid the cataclysmic spike that occurred last year“. He added that “Without a crystal ball to know exactly what our volumes will be at their peakiest, our current 50% MOM growth is a telling indicator that a 400-600% increase by peak is highly likely“.

Blanket discounts or selective targeted discounts, all the sales on a single day or spread out over a period of time, whatever happens Black Friday is going to be bigger than ever. The good news is that the spill over should see just about every retailer, online and offline benefit from people in the mood to get spending.

If you’re wondering what you can do to maximise on Black Friday, check out our “7 Black Friday sales strategies for eBay sellers” blog post.