Black Friday sales to hit record as shoppers come out for bargains

Retailers offered steeper discounts as Australians swarmed Black Friday sales, hoovering up very specific categories.

Australians have swarmed Black Friday sales and are set to hit a new record of $6.36bn in sales for the relatively new but increasingly important sales event, with retailers also responding by offering steeper discounts than last year to encourage shoppers to fill up their baskets.

It is estimated that retailers discounted on average as much as 30 per cent, against last year when over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend shoppers were treated to discounting across the retail sector of 26 per cent.

Such was the pull of Black Friday sales that many consumers kept away from the shops in October to save up for the bargains that were just around the corner, and reflected in the release of retail slaes data for October wbich showed seasonally-adjusted retail trade fell 0.2 per cent over the month, after growing by 0.9 per cent in September.

Considerably lower than the consensus expectation of a 0.1 per cent rise, it looks increasingly as though consumers temporarily paused in October to take advantage of price discounts during Black Friday events in November.

And while many retailers also kicked off Black Friday sales as much as two weeks early to ensure they could grab the attention of consumers and ring up early sales, the buying spree heat was still centred on Friday with 10am on November 24 the peak of sales activity and the top-selling categories including clothing, personal care, shoes and jewellery.

According to fresh figures from online retail platform Shopify, the average basket size across the Black Friday sales was $165.70 with consumers preferring to shop via their mobile devices (73 per cent) against desktops (27 per cent).

Australian Retailers Association chief executive Paul Zahra, who represents the $400bn retail sector, told The Australian that after speaking to his members, there was general feedback that Black Friday and Cyber Monday generated a “very good” weekend of sales.

“I spoke to a combination of major retailers and small to medium-sized businesses, and they all said they had a very good trading weekend, that they have either met their expectations or exceeded their expectations,” Mr Zahra said.

Mr Zahra, who is also a former CEO of upmarket department store David Jones, said the forecast was for record sales over Black Friday and Cyber Monday with total sales of around $6.36bn, up 3 per cent on last year.

Australian Retailers Association CEO Paul Zahra said discounting this Black Friday and Cyber Monday was deeper than last year. Picture: Gaye Gerard

There was also steeper than usual discounting and promotions by retailers, Mr Zahra added, enticing customers to come out and shop as they pocketed bargains to help stretch their household budgets as cost of living pressures squeezes on disposable incomes.

“Discounts were much deeper than last year, and went for longer. Last year we had “freedom spending” going on with supply chain issues and people were just happy that you (retailers) had stock and getting a deal wasn’t first and foremost in their mind.

“This year the supply chain issues have been resolved and people are looking for a deal, and it is very much about taking advantage of the sales events.”

According to Salesforce, global discounting for Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend was around 30 per cent compared to last year when in Australia discounting for that sales weekend was 26 per cent, Mr Zahra said.

Australians spent big on Black Friday and Cyber Monday ahead of Christmas. Picture: Nicki Connolly

Mr Zahra said this year was unusual in that Black Friday sales started earlier, up to two weeks before the key weekend, and that this was partly in response to slowing sales in the face of more than a year of interest rate hikes by the RBA. This slowdown was evident on the release of Australian retail turnover by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday that showed a 0.2 per cent fall in October against economist expectations of a 0.1 per cent rise.

“The ABS data came out today, and we are finding that there is a slowdown in discretionary spending and retailers have responded by starting Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales earlier. And what we also saw this year for the very first time was the supermarkets became involved, Woolworths and Coles, so we expect the numbers to be good but at the same time a general slowdown.”

He said growth areas over the weekend were beauty, men’s, women’s and kids fashion as well as gifting.

“Personal appliances like Dyson vacuums and robotic cleaners were a hot seller.”

But the gains over Black Friday and Cyber Monday would likely see less shopping in the lead up to Christmas as the new Black Friday sales campaign drags forward purchases. The ARA is predicting Christmas sales to be flat at around $67.1bn.

“That tells me we are bringing sales forward,” Mr Zahra said.

“There’s no doubt the consumer mindset right now is that they want to obviously celebrate the joy of Christmas and the holiday season, but they also are mindful there’s a cost of living crisis, and they’re working to a budget which is why Black Friday was, we believe, a record number, because people were shopping to get value at discount and get their household dollar to go further.”