Black Friday trumps Boxing Day
Retailers rung up a record sales day as Black Friday deals swept up shoppers.
Briscoe Group managing director Rod Duke said the day ‘‘was the biggest day in the history of this company’’, and was likely to be bigger than Boxing Day.
The group’s Rebel Sport, Living and Giving, and Briscoes chains all had major sales days ‘‘but the spectacular day was at Briscoes’’, he said.
Black Friday was originally a United States’ post-Thanksgiving shopping holiday that has expanded around the world in recent years.
‘‘It’s an imported sales day; it’s quite a different sales day for regular New Zealand customers,’’ Duke said.
‘‘We threw a lot of weight at it on the off-chance people would respond given it’s this close to Christmas. The general opinion was people were doing opportunistic buying and some people were buying now on the things they definitely need around Christmas time.’’
Paymark figures showed Kiwis spent $219 million on Friday, up 32.8 per cent from a week earlier. Overall, there was a bigger leap in the number of transactions than dollars spent this year.
Duke said significant markdowns on big-ticket items drew people into stores.
The Warehouse Group spokeswoman Julia Morton said the company’s Noel Leeming chian had its biggest sales day of the year and The Warehouse stores had their biggest online sales day.
Jay Goodey, executive director of deals website Onceit, said Black Fridayhad been strong and sales were up 68 per cent on the same week last year.
First Retail managing director Chris Wilkinson said Black Friday had built momentum because of international media coverage and the growing number of Australian and New Zealand retailers ‘‘jumping on the bandwagon’’.
‘‘The big difference this year is that more retailers offered dramatic savings which captured attention,’’ he said.
In particular, chain stores picked a range of lead appliance and consumer electronics items to demonstrate savings not usually achievable.
‘‘Across the sector there has been shared awareness that to deliver on what shoppers [envisage] Black Friday to be. Offers must be one-offs and not repeated any time soon,’’ he said.