Okay so I’m coming at this as someone in eCommerce so the discussion below is kind of framed around that but was curious your guys thoughts.
So once again we’ve been told this year is the biggest black friday ever in terms of sales. Well first off I’m not buying it and I’ll get into that further below, but I had a question if anyone knows as most of these articles are pretty vague. Here’s what I’m wondering…
1. Where are they pulling these stats from? Is it from a merchant processor, Shopify, Visa or MC or retail organization?
2. Are these numbers just factoring in Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the entire week around Black Friday or the entire month of November?
EDIT
So it depends on what articles you read some of these numbers come from industry associations while others are coming from companies like Adobe. In terms of what period of time these articles are looking at a lot of the ones I’m reading are specifically about Black Friday which make this claim even more unbelievable to me. Black Friday/Cyber Monday is no longer a Friday to Monday thing, its become at the very least a Monday before thanksgiving to Cyber Monday thing with most retailers extending sales to Tues or Wed so in reality were talking like a 8 or 9 day event and that’s not even considering the businesses who are essentially making the entire month of November a sale. I would expect that to dilute sales on the actual Black Friday day which is the day many of these articles are referencing
So here’s my take on this. Last year we were told it was the biggest Black Friday ever. Well I went to a few stores and they were emptier than a regular Tuesday afternoon, obviously more people shop online these but I still don’t buy its the best sales numbers ever. Last year inflation was running 9% and we were told best black friday ever by 2.3% though I believe that was later revised down, same thing that happens with GDP, job numbers, everything, they give rosy numbers make headlines and revise down later and nobody really pays attention.
That said assuming the same number of shoppers went out and bought the same number of items you’d expect sales would need to at a minimum be 9% higher than previous years adjusted for inflation to be break even, you’d need more to actually say sales were better. And this is if we buy the idea that inflation was only 9% which the fed and government told us, obviously they pick and choose what’s factored so true inflation is actually much higher.
I would expect things to be worse this year, we’ve had more layoffs, we now have an additional year of high inflation so people are even more tapped out ie its not just the 3% inflation we have this year if you buy that number, were going on 3 or 4 years of inflation which has accumulated and driven prices higher. We also have record credit card debt, record low savings levels, etc.
I just find it hard to believe this years black friday and cyber monday sales were 7% or 9% depending on the source better than previous years. Assuming they are only looking at the weekend or even the whole week its even harder to believe as in many ways the entire month of November has turned into the month of black friday. Curious your take as well as your personal experience if you’re in ecommerce. My sales were about the same as last year which is great, margins were a bit worse, but we’ve also substantially grown our emails and sms lists over the past year, had that not happenned I’d expect my sales would be considerably worse.
TLDR
So after writing this I dug into some more numbers, read a few more articles. Here’s my take. eCommerce has grown over the years and will continue to grow, it got a big boost during covid but will continue to grow as time goes on. Black Friday in store is pretty much a thing of the past at this point so what we’re seeing is a shuffle of brick and mortar sales becoming ecommerce sales which is why Adobe is reporting how amazing their users sales were. Then the obvious things are costing what say 30% more today than they were 3 years ago. What does all that mean, Black Friday sales were likely pretty fucking terrible if they are A. inflation adjusted and B. if there wasn’t a natural movement of brick and mortar sales becoming ecommerce sales.
