If you are upgrading your gadgets, you should probably wait till Black Friday. Chances are you’ll get it at half the price.
Black Friday is the day major retailers across the world cut prices on their catalogue by as much as 90%. It’s the biggest shopping day in the world. Last year, shoppers in the UK spent £810 million on online purchases alone. This year, that number is expected to exceed £1 billion over the 24 hour period.
Black Friday was an exclusive American event for a long time but it has spilled over to other parts of the world. It’s traditionally the day after Thanksgiving; the fourth Thursday in November. This year, it falls on November 27.
There is no X that marks the day of the First Black Friday, but the term was first used to refer to post-Thanksgiving shopping sales in a December 1, 1961 article in a local newspaper in Newyork; The Shortsville-Manchester Enterprise.
There are similar events like Black Friday where stores cut down prices on their catalogue. A popular one is the Singles Day in China (Alibaba alone raked in over $14 billion dollars in one day, this year). There is also the Gray Thursday (the thursday before Black Friday) and Cyber Monday (the Monday after Black Friday).
For Nigerians, Black Friday wasn’t a thing until ecommerce websites made it mainstream in 2013. Most people believe Jumia was the ecommerce website that did so. And this year, the practice will continue.
Jumia has chosen to keep the with naming convention and call it the Black Friday sales. Konga on the other hand calls it the “Konga Fall Yakata sales”. Globally, Amazon, Ebay, BestBuy and a handful of other stores have started listing Black Friday deals on their websites.
Black Friday could get messy though, especially in brick and mortar stores. Asda, the store that made Black Friday sales mainstream in the UK in 2013 has washed its hands off Black Friday this year after it witnessed the messiest scenes on its aisles last year. People have been known to get nasty in chasing the best deals on Black Fridays.
However, for ecommerce stores; what they’ll have to battle is the extra demands on their servers. Hopefully, Jumia, Konga and other Nigerian ecommerce stores that will join the Black Friday sales this year are ready for that.
Photo Credit: Purple-Orange-Blue via Compfight cc
