Black Friday is the future
What started as a few bargainpromising emails from abroad sneaking into our inboxes a couple years back has now become a digital seige of discounts difficult to resist.
Like Halloween before it, the United States has gifted us ’Black Friday’, whether we asked for it or not. And there will be no 30-day return.
One only needed to trawl through their Facebook feed on the weekend to realise this retail phenomenon is no longer just an American thing, and that New Zealand stores will need to jump in or risk being outflanked during the most crucial trading period of the year.
It doesn’t matter that the American Thanksgiving, which Black Friday follows, has no relevance to Kiwi culture, or that we already have our own savage, sweaty ode to consumerism on December 26.
What matters is that Black Friday is now everywhere online, the prices are attractive, the variety is greater than at home, the shopping is easy, and it’s ‘just in time’ for Christmas.
Not that we needed the encouragement. Kiwis’ low value imports of goods from overseas websites has been rising in volume by about 14 per cent a year, and is expected to double over the next five years.
The pervasiveness of Black Friday will only accelerate this, taking more shoppers away from the mall or high street stores.
By the time the Government looks to introduce GST on small imports in 2018 - if it gets introduced at all - Black Friday may well have a stranglehold.
While the smart Kiwi retailers will be designing their own Black Friday-style banners, as The Warehouse has for the past four years, some will continue to cry foul about the uneven playing field. There’s the absence of GST on foreign sellers, and the inability to compete on price with American retail behemoths.
We are sympathetic, to a point. Internet commerce has placed David in the same marketplace as Goliath. But far too many Kiwi retailers have either been deathly slow at embracing online shopping or have done it dreadfully.
Black Friday may also be the ultimate payback for Kiwi shoppers annually infuriated at seeing the prices for gifts they have purchased before Christmas cynically slashed the very next day.
It may even eventually erase the need for Boxing Day sales - a little American influence on a Kiwi tradition we could all be thankful for.