Black Friday’s here. Let’s shop and make it bright

NEW DELHI: Black Friday sale is catching up in India, with a spectrum of brands betting on the US ‘shopping day’ to lure discount-hungry consumers to make that impulsive purchase they'd been resisting.Many brands and retailers both offline and online, including H&M, Myntra, Shoppers Stop, Canali and RealMe are offering up to 50% discount on select products across their range for three days.At Palladium Mall in Mumbai, Reliance Brands-owned Canali, Salvatore Ferragamo, Emporio Armani, Brooks Brothers and Hugo Boss are offering up to 40% discount, while Aldo Shoes is giving flat 50% off. H&M is offering 20% off on everything on sale, industry insiders said.Many firms including beauty brands The Body Shop, Kiko Milano and Forest Essentials, and clothing companies Gap, Ajio and Myntra have put together quick shopping offers, while some such as Shoppers Stop are running a countdown on their website. Being Human is offering flat 25% discount.Black Friday, or the Friday after the Thanksgiving Day in the US, is regarded as the beginning of Christmas shopping season there. Many stores offer huge discounts and open very early, some even at midnight or the previous evening.Indian marketers offering Black Friday deals is part of their efforts to reduce their dependence on the Dussehra and Diwali shopping peak that used to account for 50-70% of the year’s sales, said Devangshu Dutta, CEO at consulting firm Third Eyesight. “With modern retail distribution channels and high fixed costs, companies want to flatten out these peak seasons as much as possible,” he said. To do this, retailers create many events around which customer footfalls are induced to push slow moving merchandise.“The Indian consumer has become smart and has by and large figured out what the discount pattern is and delays their purchases till then,” Dutta said. “While retailers and brands blame consumers for being price sensitive, they themselves create these events.”Some marketers consider Black Friday a “business occasion” to acquire new customers while some others use the occasion to push fresh merchandise sales before winter sales kick in around December 20.“As a retailer we look at this business occasion to acquire new customers since deals are irresistible,” said Tushar Ved, president of Major Brands that operated international brands such as Bath and Body Works, Aldo, La Senza and Promod in the country.Pushpa Bector, executive director at DLF Shopping Malls, said some brands in the company’s malls in Delhi-NCR and Chandigarh have seen 15-20% upward swing in sales during Black Friday. “We have seen a good response for a couple of years and the concept is here to stay,” she said.Poor Diwali performance and increasing competition from ecommerce platforms that are always offering some or the other discounts, too, are pushing offline retailers and brands to look for a reason to go on sale, experts said.“Some companies want to liquidate their winter stock which is possibly 6-12 months old,” said Yogeshwar Sharma, CEO at the popular Select Citywalk Mall in Delhi. “Since India has no concept of outlet malls where brands can recover their money, they discount nearly 70% of their stock in this sale,” he said.“It's like a herd mentality and no brand wants to lose out, even though less than two weeks from now winter sales kick in,” Sharma said.There is usually some mystery around Black Friday offers in the US as many brands don't reveal them till the last minute.72285972 “In India, too, we have witnessed much enthusiasm for Black Friday,” said Abhishek Bhattacharya, country director at Kiko Milano India. “We give an open hand to the customer to choose any product and we expect the sales to grow 4x along with acquiring new customers base.”One retailer said even those brands that had no plans to offer any special deal are forced into it because every other brand is offering some or the other scheme.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/34wNq1c