The Rise of Black Friday

I haven't posted in a while - it's always a bit intense when you start a new job and, unfortunately, I just haven't found the time. 
I was intending to write a second part to my last post, reading into the merchandising on a different retailer's site. But after yesterday, no self-respecting British retail blog could fail to write about Black Friday!

Black Friday was fairly high profile last year, but this time around, Verdict were reporting that 47% of UK shoppers were planning to take advantage of a Black Friday deal and Visa were predicting an increase of 22% on 2013 online sales. 
As it turned out, the police had to be called to several Tesco stores, where the shopping had just got out of hand, while websites such as Argos were inaccessible at several points during the day due to the sheer volume of traffic.

It is interesting that the American post-Thanksgiving promotions have just caught on in the UK. 
Though I was very aware of the event, I didn't really shop myself - I was (naturally enough) busy at work (as are a lot of people are this time of year) and, at the moment, my focus is on buying presents - not snagging a cut-price TV or upgrading my phone.
However, despite the impracticalities, Brits really warmed to the day. My boyfriend started the week asking 'what's this Black Friday-thing?' and ended it ringing me at work in an agony of indecision over whether to buy a 70%-off monitor!

Some retailers could certainly have handled it better and I'm sure they will next year. It means lower margins, but higher volumes for businesses, which should, if everyone is sensible, be very much in the shoppers' interests. 
It will be interesting to see what happens on Boxing Day. The start-date of these sales has crept earlier and earlier each year, detracting from the excitement surrounding them. And for some, shopping is always going to be the last thing you want to do the day after Christmas.
And it will be fascinating to see what happens on 27th November 2015.

Here are the details of the black products above:
Misfit Activity Tracker £79, Pebble Smart Watch £99, Jawbone UP24 Activity Tracker £99, Motorola Moto 360 Smartwarch £199
Senheiser Momentum Headphones £200, B&W P3 Headphones £170, Bose Beoplay A8 £849, Sony SRS X9 Speakers £599