Ways to Approach Just Another Black Friday

welcome to the curiosity podcast a show about everything ecommerce and digital
business the aim is simple to help you thrive online and now your host Matt
Edmondson hello my fellow ecommerce entrepreneurs my name is Matt Edmondson
and this show is for those of us who are curious about e-commerce and want to
know how to get better at doing digital business coming up in today's show we
are talking about Black Friday that's right the single busiest shopping day of
the retail calendar or at least it is at the time of recording this podcast and
you know what is just a few months away so now is the time to stop planning we're gonna get into that how to figure
out what to do with Black Friday we're gonna talk about all kinds of things to do with Black Friday is gonna be
fascinating as always there will be show notes on the website Matt Edmondson calm
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let's get into the show show as we talk about Black Friday I think talking about Black Friday would be good given that that is in fact the title of the show
think about Black Friday but maybe think about it differently now here's the key point to today's podcast and it's real
simple you can't avoid it you can't avoid Black Friday if you're an e-commerce entrepreneur right it is
the busiest day in the retail calendar where shopping is concerned and it it
seems to be like a modern phenomenon that sort of come out over the last few years and Man Alive is it is it a good
thing so well is it a good thing we're gonna get into that edge so let's not make that assumption but we are going to
talk about Black Friday I remember I remember a few years ago when black
fire was a started to really take off I think it was like the second maybe the third Black Friday we'd had in the UK and and I remember watching the sales
report for our ecommerce websites on that day and I just had the report
refreshing all the time and every time I refreshed it we'd sold more and we'd sold more it's the point where we did
over a hundred grand in one day it was let me tell you nuts I mean proper beyond nuts nuts when you
sell that amount of product in one day I'd never seen anything like it and from that day forward to this day I've kind
of realized you know what I just cannot avoid Black Friday under
any circumstances and there are two ways to think about Black Friday on that werden there's probably more than two
but we're going to think about - that is - just go for it on Black Friday and see
what you can do and the other idea is to maybe do Black Friday a little bit differently so we want to get into that
as well because I appreciate the when it comes to Black Friday it's not it's not
actually as if I can use upon as black and white as we first think and there
are some things I think that we have to think about as retailers where Black Friday is concerned to go you know what
do I do I even actually want to be involved in this so we're gonna get into that now if you don't know Black Friday
falls on November the th this year November th which for many is
especially in the UK is just after payday this year which means well we
could see even bigger numbers of online sales I know a lot of businesses are
gonna be stepping up their Black Friday sales to get that share of consumer spending because it used to be years ago
you know sales would start to increase start ramping up for Christmas around September time and you always sort of
had to think about September to start getting your Christmas sales and it there's this phenomenon now where people
have sort of put their buying off more towards the Black Friday end
the sales or the spending period seems to have offset itself which throws up a
whole bunch of obstacles actually if your retailer if you think about it because what you used to reline in
september/october time actually has now been offset until November and so it's
um it means cash flow can be a little bit tricky so this is why I say you need
to start thinking about it now because we need to start planning for what is going on ahead now let me give you some
stats every year year after year the number of Black Friday shoppers has
steadily increased right I mean steadily increased we're talking hundreds of millions of people are
online Black Friday shopping and it has clearly changed consumer habits right
yet despite Black Friday being such a crucial day now for retail business and
the economy in general research is actually starting to show that consumers are calling for what I quote suffering
from what I call Black Friday fatigue right this just like it was and as a phenomenon my observed last year where
maybe for the last two years I've noticed it more and more people are getting so bombarded with emails on
Black Friday that they just don't read any of them and it's getting harder and
harder and harder now to get people in on Black Friday you've got you know people are trying to get catchy ER
headlines and bigger deals and maybe they're starting Black Friday earlier or whatever it is just to try and get somebody to come through to their
website because I think people are suffering from this Black Friday fatigue so how do we approach Black Friday in
such a saturated market now in reality there are two main options that you can
do you can either stand out or stand down okay you can stand out or stand
down so what do I mean by that you can stand out to get the biggest share of consumer spending as possible or you can
stand down and just not really be involved in Black Friday at all and you
might think that's a little bit dangerous and you may feel pressured to do Black Friday but let me let you into
a little secret we at Jersey don't really do Black Friday anymore we do have something
called the days of Christmas which we'll get into but we don't do the crazy Black Friday offers that we used to do
and I'll tell you the main reason why well there's two main reasons actually
and we're going to talk with Michelle later after the news and Michelle is the director of Jersey Beach company and
we're going to get into white Jersey doesn't really do Black Friday anymore and the two main reasons one um I just
I'm not convinced it makes business sense and two well you've got to ask the
question about the morals and the ethics of Black Friday that's not safe you do it I think you're morally bankrupt
that's not it at all but from my point of view and there were some things that I wanted to think about and not just get into this whole wave of
let's let's just try and get people to spend as much as is humanly possible on
a single day in the calendar year especially after I saw things like the TVs you know people punching each other
in the face over TV discounts that weren't actually that great in stores and I've not really you don't really get
it on the internet I suppose but there is the question you know you have to think about in terms of consumer debts
and all that sort of stuff so we'll get into that with Michelle but before we do
there's a few ideas that I just wanted to run through my top ten tips if you
like for dealing with Black Friday and how to get the most out of it for your business so top tip number one I've
already mentioned you need to start planning now so get ahead of the curve and start planning for Black Friday now
especially if you haven't started planning already get your skates on to quote Jen from our last podcast from
when we talked with Jen last week when said I've talked with Jen and we talked about Christmas you'll know that
actually shoppers are starting their holiday shopping and researching for Black Friday sales
in October so you've got September to plan October to promote and November to
just get out there and capitalize on it right so plan your products sing your
promotional calendar your marketing emails all of that sort of stuff you've got to start planning now my top tip
number two would be be competitive and apply the right discounts now my
observation here is that consumers are becoming more and more immune to
discounts and what I mean by that is you see it a lot in the UK with sofa shops
you know where they try and sell you a couch or a settee or so for whatever you call it in your part of the world and but they're seemingly on sale always
right they're always at % off % off to the point now when you go into those stores you're like yeah I know that's
what it says and I know there's some law which means you have had to have sold this somewhere a full price for at least
a week but we just know that this is not really % off and they use those tactics all the time to draw people in
and we we sort of come immune to it and this is true I think with businesses
online and so you can regularly find your products and all the products that
you want to buy online probably for around to percent off right that's one of the beautiful things about online
shopping is it is cheaper to buy the products while in theory it should be cheaper but because you continually get
these discounts if someone comes off and says well we'll give you whatever percent off on Black Friday it
doesn't really mean that much especially because retail in the UK and in Europe at the moment is such a challenging
environment the chances are they've seen those discounts already because retailers are trying to drum up that
business so if you're gonna use discounts be competitive and apply the
right discounts and and use your landing pages to clearly display your discounts
make it really really obvious what people are getting and why they should
shop with you on Black Friday and how it's different maybe toward has been done previously top tip
number three offer targeted promotions instead of site wise sales to protect
your profit margins now what I mean by this is if you're going to do discounts don't feel like you have to discount
every single product on your website granted that's the easy thing to do and
it's very tempting to see oh you know what we'll just give % off site-wide on Black Friday but you've got to remember for every
discount you give that's coming straight out of your profits right especially if you're using other platforms to sell
like Amazon or you know these are the platforms they protect their profit
margins so if you're gonna discount guess what it is coming out of your pocket so one of the ways that you can
protect yourself and not lose out too much is to offer targeted promotion so don't do site wide discounts do very
strategic targeted promotions and on certain products maybe and not just the
boring slow-moving products I mean you're gonna have to choose carefully what's going to work for you but definitely think about maybe doing
targeted promotions and I've seen companies go crazy on Black Friday just
to try and get the traffic they're offering such big discounts that actually they've taken every single
ounce of profit out of it so it makes no difference whether they sell anything other than they're converting stock back
into cash which is you know it's a risky strategy for a long-term business let me tell you so top tip number four it's not
just about discounts I really want to emphasize this point because this is what Black Friday's become synonymous
with um but it's not necessary now if we look at the trends from Amazon Prime day
a few months ago and the research there and we came across something on mocked
in line which basically said well discounted products saw the largest average period over period revenue
increases a quite a lot of products
weren't discounted on prime day and still saw significant growth now what do I mean by this say let's say you're
you're selling a product on black right and you could discount it or you could not discount it while the stats
tell us from prime day if you do discount it you will sell more of that product but if you don't discount it you
will also sell more of that product just not as much as you would sell had you
have discounted it so the stats say that typically people saw about an
percent increase in the previous year sales if they discounted whereas if they
didn't they saw a % increase on your own yourselves if they didn't discount
so what this is telling you is that discount cells but not discounting also
sales and the reason for that and this is really important is because people
are generally in a buying mood around Black Friday around that time of year
they are in the mood to buy things they've been saving up they've been thinking about Christmas they're ready
to buy sure if you've got a discount that will help but if you haven't and you're still doing your great service
and your great value then you should still see an uplift in sales now what
that will be for you obviously you need to I wish I had the crystal ball which we could tell you but unfortunately I
don't but what I am saying to you is when it comes to Black Friday consumers
are ready to buy they're in more of a buying frenzy if you like so you can
feed that by discounting but you can also capitalize on it not through necessarily through discounting but you
could add value in other ways which takes those ready to buy buyers and brings them to your site right so if
you've been doing your customer service well and offering a great service to
your clients throughout the year then you should to see a general herb lift in sales anyway which has been our experience the last few years my top tip
number Black Friday is not just a day of sales but it is now a week-long
weekend long should I say event ok and this is important in actually there
was a % in sales from Black Friday this is this was quite
interesting data and so in sales fell by four percent based on but
when you look to the weekend as a whole sales in were significantly higher
than the year before okay almost a third higher than so
that's a lot that's a big difference so what that tells me is people are moving
more from just one day to a weekend long event so they're still buying the Thursday that buy on the Friday the
button Saturday the Sunday and the Monday and one of the trends we even observed last year is a lot of people
doing Black Friday a week or two weeks early to try and sort of jump the queue if you like and you can do things like
that but just bear in mind that Black Friday is not just a day now it is a weekend so think more of four or five
days versus just one day okay because the data tells us that actually you can
make it up and in fact there's if sales fall technically on Black Friday this is where I think consumers are going you know what I'm all Black Friday doubt I
don't need to see another email I'm just gonna ignore them and maybe do some browsing over the weekend so ya think we
can not just one day okay top tip number six prepare for a increase in traffic so
you know if people are in a buying frenzy and if I want of a better expression but people who are in a
better mood to buy products and if you are gonna do stuff on Black Friday if you're gonna draw in people make sure
and this is an obvious but oh oh let me tell you the amount of people that don't
do this is just unbelievable but it's obvious but often overlooked it's
probably the best way to describe it and that is this keep keep in mind your
server there has to be prepared for the spike in traffic and the site speed
needs to be you know your site needs to be able to cope and keep speeds up for the increased amount of traffic so if
you're on a slow server already coming up for Black Friday oh my goodness you need to sort that out before Black
Friday because really especially on that weekend know got the patience to wait for your slow
sight sort of load up and you'll lose a lot of valuable business let me tell you if your site is slow so do check it and
check your site speed okay and if you want to know how to do that just go to
Google just and then Google PageSpeed insights right that's the sweet type in the Google bar
PageSpeed insights it will take you to a Google service put your web address in
and it will tell you how your website speed is on both mobile and desktop is
some valuable data go and have a look at it and see how you're doing and then see what you need to do for Black Friday ok
tip top tip let's put a top tip number seven if you can't compete with the big
business which you know you can really when it comes to when it comes to
discount if that's one of the areas where you struggle then you can create
some interest in your business by sacrificing some of your old stock or inventory or inventory depend on purpose
you are in the world you have to pronounce words in like three or four different ways with an international audience it's really quite interesting anyway if you we've done this quite a
bit on Jersey you can take advantage of Black Friday and Cyber man in that
weekend to offer if you can offer discounts do heavy discounts on old
stock right that you just need to get shot off and so then in your advertising
and marketing you can say up to % off or whatever it is to get people through to your site and or you could even give
away old stock like if you buy this product you get this product for free and people go oh I've got a free product
that was worth whatever bucks and now I've got it for free you know so not only can you you know only just that
sort of sort out your stock but obviously customers get sample products they get extra value and they're super
super happy so that's one of the ways that you can add value is to look at what's not moved off your shelves and do
something with that now obviously if people aren't buying it because it's rubbish or not only good in the first place you
might not want to do this strategy but if it's pretty reasonable products and people just don't bind it because they don't know it it's an unfamiliar brand
you've not really marketed it before and the price point may be too high whatever the reason is but you know fundamentally
it's a good product then you know take this opportunity to get the samples of it out there and see what people think
and say and get the reviews back on it etc you know the scoop top tip number
and this is about again thinking about doing Blackfyre differently i have been inspired by Patagonia who donates all of
their Black Friday sales to charity that I think is extraordinarily generous and
you could look at doing something that supports a charity and by donating a
portion of your sales or if you want to be like Patagonia and donate all your sales to charity then have a look at
something like that what could you do that maybe says you know what I'm not going to discount this product by %
but every time someone buys it we will donate that % to such and such charity
right and we really want to fundraise whatever amount whatever target you set
and make sure the charity makes sense for your organization so if you're a website that is doing plastic free stuff
maybe you want to raise charity for getting rid of plastic waste from the ocean if you're you know if you're like
us with a beauty site there are plenty of sites out there that support this kind of stuff like I really like how the
Red Cross does training makeup training for people who have had facial surgery
and you know they really help people sort of get their confidence with using
makeup after serious facial trauma so something like that is really great you
know whatever makes sense for your industry and your customers and your
tribe are really going to connect with and vibe with have a look at that you know maybe you could do something like that
top tip number nine is simply do nothing that's why I'm mentioning you don't even
have to participate in Black Friday I appreciate there is a massive pressure to do so but actually
if you're listening to this maybe maybe you just need to take a bit of time out
and think about it and save the discounts for Christmas instead or companies like IKEA Asda Marks & Spencer
Selfridges Apple next in Primark are just some of the brands in the UK that
have opted out of doing Black Friday and you know what they're okay we've opted
out of it in previous years and you know what whilst we've not done the sales our profits have been an awful lot better
let me tell you so you don't necessarily have to do anything you don't have to
jump on the bandwagon if that makes sense for your business there is there is some arguments they actually there's
there's good reasons to promote that you're not doing it there's a company that I've been connected with for a
number of years really like them trade craft they're a fair trade organisation and they specialize in ethical products
and fair trade products well they didn't have they've not done Black Friday because the more they discount the more
the the more the you know supplier suffering a whole point of fair trade is everybody gets fader paid a fair wage
right and so they came up with a campaign in which they ran for a number of years called just Friday and just as
in justice for all for all the suppliers and but also just as in it's only a
Friday guys you don't have to get crazy and you know what their sales always went up but they never discounted on
just Friday and it was a great campaign to run so you could do something which
is in the opposite spirit okay and top tip number is learn top tip number
four which is I don't have you seen that movie the Karate Kid where mr. Miyagi turns to tango says to
Daniel and says listen the two rules of karate this rule number one is karate is
for defense only rule number two is first learn rule number one so it's a
little bit like that rule number ten is learned rule number four which is if you remember it is not just about discounts
you don't remember from prime day yes if you discount you may increase your sales but you don't
have to discount to get those increase in sales because people are ready to buy anyway there are alternatives and
different ideas that you could look at where you increase value you promote
charity you do all of those kind of things that was in essence rule number four it's not just about discount so
there are my top tips now there are no right or wrong ways to do Black Friday as consumers we know we are going
to be completely bombarded by companies competing to give us the best offers
that they have right you know and I know we are going to get emails on Black Friday
but that doesn't mean I'm gonna go to all websites I generally pick websites that I know
I'm and connect with those guys I spend quite a lot of time just deleting emails
on Black Friday if I'm honest with you and to be fair and actually this is maybe top tip number because this
could be a free one actually I'm just gonna throw this one in there if you run an e-commerce website whenever you get
an email promoting Black Friday I would suggest you keep it and file it away so
when you're searching for ideas for next year you can go through that folder of emails and see what other people have
been doing especially your competitors right you really want to know what they did look at that did it work well for
them what could you learn from it what could help you there's so much free learning that you can get from just
subscribing to everybody's emails now I appreciate you might not want all these
emails on Black Friday but it's literally like I saying move them into a folder and come back to them next year
what's good what's bad what do you like what do you not like how could that help you with your own Black Friday campaigns
that's free that's that's all that it in that's all top tip number eleven so yeah
make sure you do that because you know what we are gonna get bombarded and so
consumers just they just want a reason to give you cash and it's noticed about discounts and there are lots of reasons
why they would give you cash especially if you're a great company to begin with but like it or not Black Friday is part of
the holiday shopping season and despite the Black Friday fatigue it isn't going
away anytime soon so do you make sure you plan and think about it and get it
moving do you let me know what ideas you've got coming up I would love to hear from you especially if you found
something that's worked really really well get in touch connect with me on Instagram or Facebook or all those kind
of platforms and let me know I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas of black about Black Friday we're now gonna
get into the news and then after that you're going to want to stick around and listen to my interview with Michelle as
we talk all things black fighting [Music]
we are now going to take a few minutes to stop pause and review this week's
ecommerce news Matt did you know that
Naik has a whole line of clothing and shoes that are made from recycled plastic bottles I did not know that
actually today advertise that today no they don't and actually they have a really good reason why they don't do
that according to science daily I was reading that recent research shows that
when mainstream brands advertise using visual cues suggesting that the product
is uninvent aliy friendly or green consumers may actually evaluate the product as being less effective as
opposed to a nice green brand oh well so if your Nike makes to federal recycled
plastic bottles you just do it but don't tell people about it because they think it's not going to be as good yeah they just keep it under the radar wow that's
fascinating so unless you're a nice green brand well okay so I guess the
lesson here is if you if you're a mainstream brand just keep what your recycled stuff is down on the down-low
right just don't tell as many people yeah that's surprised me actually what's the next bit next one do you use the app
tick tock no no because I'm over the age of okay okay and so there's an
article on HubSpot which says that many big brands have started using it as a marketing tool to create fun and brand
awareness videos that wouldn't surprise me I think if you're if you have a client base or a customer base which is
under the age of and tick tock is why those platforms you should definitely be looking at right because it's it's taken
off in quite a big way of a recent months yeah cuz I just thought it was something when it first came out I
thought it was just something kind of fun kind of weird yeah but I didn't expect it to become this big and be
start like it did yeah yeah my seems to become popular with what I call Jen's ad
people because it's less um what did they say it was less cynical than the
likes of Twitter cuz obviously you on Twitter everything in the country and so it's less cynical
which I find quite an interesting statement that they've made say yeah I've I don't use it but I've definitely
come across it and I thought well if I ever do sell products to anybody under the age of that becomes my market it
would definitely be a platform that I would be looking at right now simply seeing what I could do so I'm not surprised many of the brands have
started to do that what's next CrossFit Games CrossFit I know you're a huge CrossFit legend CrossFit so a lot
of the people listening to the podcast was switched off eyes when ice costume tosses I'm just not having down moravian
I'm not I'm not one of those I'm not a maniac about it but I do like CrossFit
and I did go the CrossFit Games last year I read on morning chalk up that for the first time ever and CrossFit Games
was being streamed outside of their usual media partners into different
languages mm-hmm this last year well first and foremost I'm impressed to read in morning Joker yeah why would you not
be ready but it's true this year CrossFit did something remarkable and very it took the whole CrossFit
community by surprise when they did it normally what CrossFit do is they aim at the CrossFit Games which is an annual
Games event you know they have hundreds of thousands of people around the world watching this event is massive and they
used to stream it on Facebook on YouTube so when I wanted to watch it I would go to Facebook or YouTube and watch the
CrossFit themselves would stream the games right so the decision they made last year was actually they were going
to get rid of their entire media department and they were going to outsource and the streaming to other
partner so they were they in effect created the livestream but you could you
could go and use that stream and do your own comments on it so I could have set up like I could have been a CrossFit
media partner MySpace and do my own commentary over the livestream which meant that people around the world watch
the games in different languages so you'd have Spanish partners Brazilian policy they would then commentate on it
in different languages which is why you've got the different languages which made it totally accessible and this is
quite fascinating not just because they did that with the media but also because this is an e-commerce podcast we should talk
about e-commerce but also because they have outsourced their e-commerce side of
things so they made it but the reason they made a big decision to do this was because the CrossFit Games was taken
over CrossFit if that makes sense they didn't when they started CrossFit they didn't start it out with the CrossFit
Games in minds they had merged they had a very different vision very different ideals and then this CrossFit Games
thing grew into being a bit of a monster and it kind of was the tail leading that was at the tail wagging the dog is that
the phrase I don't even something like that it became the wrong thing that was leading it and so last year they're like
no no we need to get back to who we are what our vision is what our roots are what our values are and just do that
really well so they changed their website they changed how they did media they changed a lot of things about the
CrossFit Games and they even outsourced their whole ecommerce side of things that they could just focus on their core
activities which i think is quite a remarkable thing to do and principally because they realized that there were
better people at do media so leather people do media they realize are better people at doing e-commerce so let them
do ecommerce and we focus on what we do best and so as a company in London that
actually when the the e-commerce bid I wish I'd have known about it cuz I definitely definitely would have
contacted CrossFit and said hey we can definitely do your e-commerce right you know we'd like the collab project thing
it would have been amazing to do that with CrossFit so I feel like I've missed a big opportunity yeah sounds like it that would have been real fun it would
cuz I've got a load of geared like a bigger discount it may be a CrossFit gym yeah I think that was part of the reason
why they got it cuz I've got a CrossFit gym they've got a box down in London and but yeah if you ever in London go check it out whatever it takes is the name of
the store and and if you go to the CrossFit site they will take you to whatever it takes which is their new
ecommerce partner they call whatever it takes so yeah really fascinating this whole thing about getting back to your
core roots and outsourcing what you're not so good at there the figures are
morning Chalker basically tell me though the whole thing was a massive success because like I say called everybody out
everyone's like what are you doing are you nuts and then like twelve months later okay and that was a genius move and so it's
worked out really well for cool thank you very much thank you very much that's
the news so now let's get back to it
I'm here with the fabulous Michelle we shall say hi hi and if you don't show
Michelle is director yeah at just beauty company and runs Jersey so show we're
going to talk about Black Friday okay let me start by asking what's what's
your current thinking about by Friday love it hate it personally hate it with
a passion for lots and lots of different reasons but I am NOT a big fan of Black
Friday I appreciate it's around yeah you can't get rid of it right so why do you hate
it and I think it's people's expectations of what it is it's it's now
become that people wait for the Black Friday sales they wait for those offers
that they they expect so the rest of
October November just completely stops for businesses and it could be
businesses are now controlled by Black Friday so you think Black Friday's had a negative impact on businesses yes I
think when it started it was there was a massive hype the supermarket's got
involved the likes if the Amazon got involved offering great deals and and
every other company jumped on that bandwagon and it companies are now pressurized to be on that bandwagon hmm
but I don't think it's always beneficial to companies I feel that they feel like they have to offer something but it is
such a cost to their business yeah there's the profitability there there
isn't the profits anymore in a lot of companies not just small companies but large companies and more and more the
companies that were really offering them great deals if you look at breadth Black Friday now they're not actually offering
great deals but people perceive because the word Black Friday is in front of it though very low growth they get in these
great deals and they're not because ultimately somebody has to pay for that you know there's extra labor there
there's extra and extra purchasing that needs to happen extra marketing and that
all costs hmm but if you're selling something with
% off then you need to sell twice as many as what you did previously mm-hmm
and I personally don't feel like feel like it's worth it and I think
people laughing the public are getting a little bit fed I'll put that Friday mmm you know there's there's a particular
high street company that I always think about to European high street company and they have never got involved in
Black Friday use that so that's our yeah they've never got involved with Black
Friday and I think it's a clever move they never jumped on that bandwagon and therefore if you want to purchase from
sorry you purchased any time during November they've trained that customers haven't they not - exactly so they don't
they don't they don't email about it they don't they don't go you're going to get anything better on Black Friday than
this week before where as so many other companies have gone on about Black Friday Black Friday Black Friday that
people go I'm now not going to purchase throughout the rest of November yeah I'm guys like Amazon you wouldn't do that
would you because you know they're gonna do it yeah exactly that you you are waiting for this deal but then the
problem becomes is they've waited they've waited they'd waited and then people go into mass panic mode and they
go on and they don't see the deal that they want and then unless you've got
something else on the site to attract them he sites looking good they're just instantly click off mmm so you're paying
for people to keep clicking on that there's so many other implications of Black Friday but the the supermarkets
originally were offering like TVs for ridiculous prices remember can you remember the fights and supermarkets
have pulled away from that the likes of Tesco and that they're not doing great deals anymore no as the don't do Black
Friday no they don't do it and there's a reason for that mmm because they would
have had to have so much more manpower and mmm you know they've spent on the market in
and and they would have their profits would have been no greater so do you
think then for Jersey beauty company Black Friday
good thing or a bad thing so we've tried various different things for Black
Friday and one is to try and encourage people and to join the site and again
those people that they get involved in that they are not the people that are going to come back they're just after
something for free that's when we say we've encouraged them to join the site is we promotions have been right to get
their email address basic that's it yeah all we've given something which is almost free on the website to give their
details all free to get their details but that's they just want the freebies they're not interested in returning
because there's one time we got like three or four thousand emails oh yeah just really straightforward then when we
looked at that date Ramon what how many of those three or four thousand people ended up buying from us again where it
wasn't how I know there weren't many digits there I put it that way it was
really low and that just shows the mentality of people around Black Friday they're after something for nothing
their mentality is something for nothing and for Jersey those those customers are
expensive they there's no they're not gonna come back they're not gonna repeat
purchase if we're gonna do those deals then we do those deals with our loyal customers mm-hmm our customers that we
value and will come back to us yeah the ones which yeah our favorite people the
ones that we think of gray you know we'll come back time and time again and last year was far more profitable from
Jersey the print of you and we offered instead of doing discounts we just offered more in the boxes so yes let's
look at that because last year we made the deliberate decision not to yeah we did that Friday we did and it was really the first time
that we decided to do that right because before we were like Black Friday Black Friday Black Friday and last year
everyone was kind of nervous game what we're not gonna do it yep and so what did we decide to do instead so we were
fortunate enough to be supported by particularly one of our suppliers
that decided to do Black Friday and so we did quite a large selection of gift
with purchases yeah so they got like a really ridiculous and I gift with purchases for purchasing on
the site so they didn't get a discount from anything nothing no prices changed but they got more in their box a greater
value of their box and which they can use to create their own gifts for people
around Christmas so it was that sort of marketing so by increasing the value we
didn't discount yeah and for us to increase the value wasn't difficult because the suppliers worked with us yes
and so the bottom line was profits were great profits were great yeah they were
yeah they were and it it was looked like there weren't as many orders coming
through but the orders that come through were more profitable so it's not about
going all great we got X amount of orders on this particular day you go all yes we got this amount of orders but
what is the profitability there was it worth it was it worth the extra manpower that we needed the extra packaging the
extra marketing that we spent on that it wasn't and we made that decision last year and and that worked well that
worked really well are we carrying that on this year so hopefully and as long as
we get the support from our suppliers then that's easy to do mmm I think it's
important from from a company's point of view not to lead the customer down this
expectation that they need to wait for something great yeah you know we made an
important decision last year way before Black Friday to say we're not waiting for Black Friday hmm
this is we're offering great deals now don't you wait then we start to push it
in much earlier we did he does to push that whole gift with purchasing and much sooner and yeah and get it in people's
heads listen we're not doing massive discounts on Black Friday but you know you can get great value right yeah and
that really worked it really it really did work well whereas previously and like a lot of them moved on it's been
like a secret mmm we're not gonna tell you why what Black Friday's gonna be until Black Friday
or the day before Black Friday and then but that just created this hold off of
spending yeah so way off before you give us yeah yeah so did we did Jersey sort
of say to customers this is what you're gonna get on Black Friday so yes yes we
did just before and we made a point of
yes this is what you're gonna get Black Friday hmm not like weeks before
but a few days before and I think part of that decision was down to the fact
that come Black Friday everybody's inbox is tripled and the rest yeah I don't
know to be honest with you the open rates on there for every company must massively go down because people are fed
up I see in the word Black Friday yeah inna so jail on Black Friday insider I'm
not interested I don't want to open it because I know I person they feel like I don't have the time to go through that
inbox to clear it all yeah and I can't be alone with that so I think it's
important to mention it before so that before everybody then becomes unindicted
with Black Friday emails and to a certain degree because people it's easy
for people to unsubscribe now struggling to say that way if you bombard them too
much they're just gonna unsubscribe yeah and you've lost them anyway then and so I think it's really
important not to annoy customers over them that period because a lot of people
are shopping a lot of people are you know emotions are high and you know the last thing they want is another
emails of one company in a will straight you do see a lot of companies actually sent to ten twenty miles on yeah I mean
it's ridiculous amount it's nuts and I know person there I go right that's it I've had enough for you unsubscribe yeah
so it depends on what kind of company you are and what you're selling but because we're a company that wants to be
a around long term like this long-term relationship with customers you know once you buy your skin kick
you're gonna keep buying that right for the next years so and we want you to keep buying it from us and I think if
you're a kind of product we're actually like a fidget spinner I mean and this chair assures a shelf
life yeah you're gonna do the miles on Black Friday you're gonna get it out as quick as you can um so I think yeah and there are some
benefits because if you've got you know and some dead stock as such that you
need to get rid of you for cash flow reasons or just to clear it then this is your perfect opportunity it's a good
time it's a good time for that you know as long as you do it well and you know
you get very precedent no self no this is a great time to get rid of that yeah
there's an argument I mean because Jersey sells other people's products and
it's very difficult for us to create this culture as we don't discount our products now I get Apple never discount
anything ever which in an ideal world you'll just go wheels down discount you
know you get the product to this what is this sometimes we might give you a few extra bits and bobs along the way increase in value in gift with purchase
but it's hard when you're selling products that other people are also
selling online because then whatever Jersey has to do with Black Friday you've also got away of what all the
other competitors are doing I'm like yeah right that's right and how does how
does that in design into your thinking when you think about life oh it does but at the same time you can easily be
pulled into trying to compete with them and that's not that's not good either
you've got to make a decision and go well if they want to beat us on price
hmm then let them let them do that for
that weekend because you have to make decision is is it profitable for you to
try and beat them because some people will always be cheaper yeah and if
you're after that sort of customer that customer will never stay with you anyway well next they're always pricing ting right yeah they will always go to the
cheapest and then it becomes a race to the bottom and actually they're not your ideal call yeah they chained you in the art so tip
them would be obviously make the best decision for your business but yeah you would say from your experience actually
Black Friday doesn't have to be just about offering the crazy big discounts no it doesn't eat it can be just a
simple thing adding an extra simple thing it can be just a black trade is
about making your site look good as well because they're gonna come onto your site you know make it attractive make it
so that actually there may not be a best deal but there is something suitable that could be for that around that
seasonal time and so Black Friday for a
lot of companies is not just about discounting it depends whether or not you've got stopped to get rid of or not
but it's not about discounting because you've then got yourself into something that people expect very good thanks so
watch this place if you wanna see what yours is doing on Black Friday check out Jersey Beauty coca-cola UK
sign up to the emails and I'm sure you'll see what it's all about but in the meantime thanks show pre-shape in here thank you Matt
you've been listening to the curiosity podcast with Matt Edmondson subscribe
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