On Friday last week, accountingcpd users demonstrated to us in no uncertain terms that they were big fans of Black Friday, with sales on the day breaking our all-time record.
But how did it go for other retailers?
Sigma, the user experience agency, reports purchases made across Black Friday and Cyber Monday topped £7bn, with the majority coming online. According to Vend, the retail management platform, although overall retail saw an increase of as much as 28%, in-store spending on Black Friday dropped by 7% on the same day last year.
But one retailer seems to have bucked the trend. John Lewis recorded its biggest ever week, with deals eagerly snapped up not just on electricals and gadgets but on beauty products and clothing too. What's more the success applied to both online and in-store purchases.
But before you decide that Black Friday is clearly the preserve of the middle classes, things did not go so well at its sister chain, Waitrose, where a difficult week saw sales slip back by 1.6%.
Even for the most successful retailers, the fear is of course that apparently high sales are really just the result of shoppers bringing their purchases forwards to take advantage of the deals on offer. To find that out we will have to wait for the year end results.
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