Black Friday doing more harm than good, Andrew Jennings

Black Friday is turning into a nightmare for UK retailers, according to Andrew Jennings, whose CV includes stints at Harrods, House of Fraser and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Also of interest: Black Friday Q&A: Harriet Green, General Manager, IBM Watson Customer Engagement, Internet of Things & Education

He told the Evening Standard: “As a retailer I’m totally against it — the lead up to Christmas should be a great opportunity to sell at full price. The sale period is getting longer so to take a price cut at Christmas is against everything I believe in in terms of getting a retailer profitable. Having said that, now we’ve got it if you don’t do it you lose out. But everyone needs to think very carefully about how they participate and whether they can come up with other ideas, such as a charity donation instead. For example, Fat Face are donating £100,000 in exchange for not participating in Black Friday. It’s already looking as if Black Friday has depressed sales in October and if we’re not careful we will find that all of November is being discounted.”

Brits are set to splurge £2.6 billion on Black Friday 2017, an 8% increase on last year, according to VoucherCodes and the Centre for Retail Research (CRR). Online spending alone is expected to reach £1.15 billion on 24th November, up 15% on 2016.