Biggest Black Friday buy: R10m
● One of the biggest events on the retail calendar, Black Friday set several new highs last week.
Edcon CEO Grant Pattison said the retailer had its best Black Friday yet, with doubledigit increases in sales. He said customers were focused on branded products, particularly cosmetics, and the group sold more cellphones in the four days from Black Friday to Cyber Monday than in any other four-day period in its history.
Massmart communications manager Refilwe Boikanyo said top-selling lines in-store were TVs, microwaves, camping chairs, laptops and cooler boxes, while top sellers online were gaming and DStv devices, fridges, small appliances and camping chairs.
With many shoppers getting paid on Black Friday this year, Shoprite said it had record-breaking sales. It ran the promotion in all 15 countries in which it trades.
“Checkers and Checkers Hyper collectively served 144 customers per second on Black Friday 2019,” said a spokesperson for the company. It sold enough Omo washing powder to do more than 11-million loads of washing and enough Oros to fill an Olympicsize swimming pool.
John Bradshaw, retail executive: marketing at Pick n Pay, said customers were looking for everyday items to stock up their pantries, Christmas gifts and bigger-ticket items they’d been saving up for, such as TVs.
Online retailer Takealot, which had forecast an 80% increase this year in Black Friday sales to R352m, said it did not have any information to release on its sales.
The number of transactions processed through FNB’s Merchant Acquiring Systems for Black Friday was 15-million, compared with 10-million last year, a 50% increase.
Standard Bank said total card transactions for Black Friday this year increased by 13% compared with the same period last year, and the average value of transactions rose by 12%. Some people swiped their cards for as little as R1 but the most expensive card transaction on the day was for R650,000.
Standard Bank’s female customers spent slightly more than male customers this year, similar to last year. The biggest spenders on the day were customers aged between 24 and 36 years old, followed by those between 36 and 48. These two categories accounted for more than half the spend on Black Friday, in line with global trends.
Automated payments clearing house BankservAfrica said there were 7-million transactions this year with an overall value of R6bn, up 106% from last year. The most expensive online transaction on Black Friday was for a hospitality purchase of just over R10m by an international company, said Solly Bellingan, head of customer relations at BankservAfrica.