Opinion

When is the Black Friday sale? You might as well ask how long is a piece of string.

The answer to the Black Friday sale question can be whatever you want it to be, and you’ll never be wrong. 

Here at ChannelNews we’ve been told about them all.

Some BF sales last for a few days. 

Others last for three consecutive Fridays – they literally start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. The consumer is left with their head spinning, checking the fine print to see when the next BF instalment begins and ends, and which time zones apply.

Some Black Friday sales seem to just roll on forever. Or into Cyber Monday, which itself rolls into Christmas. Just today I saw an ad on social media for a “Black Friday Reloaded Sale”. 

The whole thing has become a complete shemozzle, which is not surprising given there are no official rules surrounding Black Friday. It’s not like, say, a Boxing Day sale, which would look foolish if it began on June 11. 

Black Friday sale – Google image search.

Black Friday has gone from being a one-off short-term sale that offered knee-knockingly good value on a range of products (or, in some cases, EVERYTHING in stock) to a hazy, meaningless “event” that doesn’t seem to bear much of a difference to all the other sales that happen each year.

Back to School; Australia Day; March Madness; Good Friday, Easter Saturday, Sunday and Monday; EOFY; Spring; Stocktake; New Year’s Day; BOGOF; Closing; Opening; Click Frenzy; Christmas in July.   

During the Black Friday sale period retailers are encouraged by trade associations to do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as it’s somewhere around now. This has led to the current morass, where what was once special is being loved to death.

The Australian Retailers Association counts Black Friday as being three consecutive days (the last Friday in November, the Saturday and the Sunday), followed immediately by Cyber Monday.

It has predicted a 5.5 per cent increase in spending year-on-year over that weekend, but hard data is not readily available on how much on average is being shaved off the RRP across the board, and for how long. 

Given that Black Friday sales can start early and go on for weeks, how does the retail association accurately gauge what is being spent due to the Black Friday factor, how much of that stock is being discounted, how much of it would have sold anyway in the lead up to Christmas at RRP?

Sale.

Anecdotally, it seems as if over time retailers are offering up fewer seriously discounted items (e.g., more than 50 per cent off) and a wider range of stock with less impressive 15 to 25 per cent discounts. The sort of savings you expect at all the other annual sales.

And there are grumbles on chat boards about prices being hiked ahead of Black Friday, only for the “discount” to be chewed up in part by the higher RRP.

Granted, if you’re looking to buy a new $5,000 fridge and a retailer has the exact one you want at a Black Friday price of $4,500, then you can fill that fridge with your $500 discount, even though it’s only 10 per cent. 

But if you’re saving 40 or 50 per cent on a $12 t-shirt (only small and 5XL available) or $30 memory stick, levels of excitement are more likely to be contained.

There are some very solid Black Friday deals around at the moment, even though Black Friday has finished. I can see a $169 juicer for $69; a $199 food processor for $69; a $749 smart watch for $399; a $120 decanter for $50; a $1,894 TV for $894. 

The risk for retailers is that Black Friday and Cyber Monday lose their special sheen and drift into the realms of Just Another Sale.