Black Friday, dedicated to deep price slash to attract huge customer volume, began in the United States, spread to the United Kingdom, other parts of Europe, and is catching on in Nigeria, Africa’s largest market.
Businesses globally look at sales opportunities, and e-commerce platforms across Nigeria crashed prices to earn unprecedented patronage on Friday, November 28.
A total 3,000 per cent sales volume was recorded by DealDey, Jumia, Adibba, and Konga; with Konga emerging the super beneficiary.
Vanishing American customers
But Black Friday sales in the United States plummeted this year, leaving retailers completely stumped.
After weeks of declining gas prices in the U.S., analysts predicted the biggest holiday season ever. Industry groups like the National Retail Federation reasoned that Americans would use their fuel savings on gifts, reported businessinsider.com.
But despite encouraging forecasts, Black Friday weekend sales were down 11 per cent. Cyber Monday sales rose 8 per cent, falling short of many predictions.
They are probably broke, according to some analysts and executives.
Brad Anderson, former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Best Buy, told CNBC that customers were “still feeling constrained,” which could lead to a lackluster holiday season.
Macy’s CFO, Karen Hoguet, told analysts that consumers had priorities other than clothing and housewares.
“Shoppers are spending more of their disposable dollars on categories we don’t sell, like cars, healthcare, electronics, and home improvement,” Hoguet said in a call with investors.
Nigerians sign on in great numbers
Across the Atlantic, however, Konga.com cemented its position as Nigeria’s largest online mall as it delivered the country’s biggest online shopping day with its version of the Global Black Friday sales tagged “Yakata”, a Nigerian colloquial term meaning “the price has fallen to rock bottom”.
The sales started on Thursday and ended by midnight on Black Friday, giving shoppers more time to shop.
Yakata pioneered and localised the concept of Black Friday in the Nigerian e-commerce industry. The first edition in 2013 and was a big success.
However, the 2014 sales delivered even more outstanding results, Konga seeing a record breaking 1,440 per cent year-on-year increase in online revenue.
Its founder and CEO, Sim Shagaya, disclosed that at its peak, Konga processed N50 million worth of orders every hour and sold 500 per cent more items in the two days than it did in all of 2012.
The success of Yakata came behind a lot of hard work. Over the past one year, Konga made the strategic decision to invest in technology and other operational infrastructure. A different strategy from that of other Nigerian e-commerce companies which focus more on advertising.
Konga enhanced its website and other operating systems and created a logistics and delivery arm, called KExpress, to deliver orders every day.
It also opened up its marketplace to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the course of the year, with thousands of SME owners trading on the site.
Konga.com did not experience down-time during the Yakata sales, despite the large number of visits to the site across different metrics.
Konga expresses gratitude
Shagaya said: “We received thousands of orders within the first few hours of launching Yakata. The orders poured in from virtually every state in Nigeria and interestingly from several other countries as well.
“Following the Yakata sale, almost 100,000 items are now being shipped all over Nigeria.
“Over 40 per cent of the people who shopped had never bought online before. With a significant part of Konga’s orders generated from mobile devices it shows that e-commerce is really growing fast in Nigeria and it is a clear pointer that mobile is the way Nigerians will shop online in the future.”
Shagaya expressed gratitude to all customers that took part in Yakata, saying, “because of our customers, Konga and many small and medium size retailers that sell on our platform witnessed sales volumes that were simply staggering.
“We, as a people, have made a great leap forward towards the development of e-commerce in Nigeria and larger Africa.”
Power generator, tablet, hottest deals
The hottest Yakata deals included Haier Thermocool 3KVA remote control generator, sold for N53,750 at a discount of about 60 per cent; and Lenovo A3300 Tablet, sold for N18,000 instead of N30,000.