Black Friday sales up by 14.1% after a slow start
Impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the economically crippling lockdown was evident
DESPITE a slow start, overall Black Friday e-commerce sales in South Africa were higher than last year.
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the economically crippling lockdown was evident as sales got off to a disappointing start, with total spending down 63 percent from last year in the first minute after midnight, e-commerce payment gateway PayU South Africa said in a statement this week.
Unlike last year, when South Africa experienced a shopping frenzy between midnight and 2am, sales transactions were down 40 percent year-on-year in the first two hours of shopping, while total value fell 59 percent.
Online retailers, however, registered a surge at 8am which continued throughout the day, said PayU South Africa’s chief executive and chairperson of the Ecommerce Forum of South Africa, Karen Nadasen.
Over 24 hours, Black Friday trading volumes rose 14.1 percent compared with last year. Volumes were up 9.1 percent year-on-year in the preceding Monday to Thursday.
Retail accounted for 79 percent of the day’s trade, up 19 percent this year, while travel accounted for 11 percent of transactions, down from 20 percent last year.
“We were amazed by the volumes in the beauty industry this year, up 59 percent, and fashion up 117 percent,” said Nadasen. “In fact, some of them were quite astronomical in terms of the increases that we saw, but there were huge savings in that particular industry being offered.”
In proprietary data released by South African payments provider Yoco, small businesses experienced a 46 percent increase in card transactions on Black Friday compared with the average volume processed on a Friday after pay day.
“In addition to the increase seen in overall volume on Black Friday, small businesses experienced significant surges of more than 40 percent in turnover across Saturday and Sunday on Black Friday weekend when compared to a standard end-of-month weekend,” said Katlego Maphai, co-founder and chief executive of Yoco.
Yoco said compared with the average volumes that small businesses would expect to see over a weekend, Black Friday weekend was a prolific opportunity to grow, particularly for retailers. “In fact, in-store transactions for retail businesses saw an unexpected 35 percent year-on-year growth compared to 2019, against a total growth of 15 percent for all Yoco merchants who traded across both years,” it said.
South Africa, like other countries around the world, has adopted Black Friday, an informal name for the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the US, which is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. Black Friday marks the beginning of the US Christmas shopping season.
This year’s 24-hour shopping spree provided welcome relief to South Africa’s flailing economy, Ecommerce Forum of South Africa chief executive Alastair Tempest said.
“Ecommerce during Covid-19 seems to be one of the very few bright spots in an otherwise disastrous economic and health environment,” he said. “This year’s lockdown has driven many consumers to shop online, in response to the requirement for limited human contact, but the measure of success this year is that more and more South Africans are learning to trust online shopping.”