How does your business handle Black Friday?‌ 👀‌

[isabelle]

Heyyyyy Seller Community! ✨THE HOLIDAY SEASON IS HERE! 

Next week is Black Friday, in which many stores/businesses offer highly promoted sales. We're wondering how your business handles Black Friday!

Do you open early? Do you increase your staff? What kind of sales or promotions do you offer? 

[cashaber]

I sell PRE CUT Christmas trees we get slammed on black friday!

[Mirgarden]

We just keep up the same good work we've been doing the other 364 days of the year.

[DLRosenberg]

Black Friday/Small Biz Saturday is our business anniversary- we actually opened on Small business Sat 3 years ago 🙂

For this Black Friday we're doing: 20% off entire store from Friday through Cyber Monday in store and online

we aren't going to have extra staff but we'll make it work 🙂

last year that weekend was huge so we're preparing for another monster weekend.

for our out of state friends we'll be holding our weekly live sale Friday night and offering that 20% off to them, too.

[JAMS1]

We actually opened on Black Friday 3 years ago as well. We have a sale on strings (we're a guitar shop) and have munchies and drinks for everyone all day. 

[KMSnativeplants]

I close for the day 🙂

[mythicrunning]

Frankly, regardless of any specials or discounts, Black Friday is one of our slower days with Shop Small Saturday being only marginally better.  Our best period is actually Q1 as people are inspired to make good on their New Year's resolutions to get in shape/back to running.  This year, given all-around shortages in consumer goods, we may do better since we've been working to ensure that we have merchandise in the store.  One of our sales reps has shared that this year is a going to be a "war of stuff;" those retailers with stuff will do better than others. 

[JUYBoutique20]

This will be our first Black Friday.  I plan to have 20% off the whole store and online from 8-9 and decrease by 5% every hour until we are back to regular price. 

[MudFire_Deanna]

We stay home 🙂 - our biggest day is Small Business Saturday and we open our studio and make all of the work areas gallery space for the day, we invite snack vendors, this year I am making wreaths and we have a great time supporting small local handmade goods.

[Abigails_stl]

Hi! For us Small Business Saturday (SBS) is the biggest day of the year... Two years ago our Small Business Saturday was so busy it was almost overwhelming. Last year to help spread it out a little bit, we offered our SBS deal all weekend (Black Friday - Cyber Monday) and called it Shop Small Weekend. We offered a discount of $10 off every $50 spent and did giveaways with purchase. It may seem like a large discount but the last few years we have definitely gained a lot of new repeat customers from getting them in the door for the sales. Spreading out the sale over the weekend also eased fears of overcrowding (we also had a limit of how many were allowed in the store at one time.) We don't increase our staff for just this day, but everyone is scheduled on Saturday and about 60% of staff on Friday and Sunday. We don't open early... we used to but it just turned into a really really long day for me so the last 2 years we have stuck to our regular hours and have still seen an increase. We also open a 2nd register full time that weekend and have a 3rd and 4th iPad on stand by when the lines get really long. 

[midwest-aromas]

A small business here, very small actually.

I'm going after the idea of thanksgiving and offering free shipping on online orders with a minimum quantity of items purchased, from Monday-Friday. I'm still unsure if I want to also run the promotion Saturday & attempt to fulfill orders, before the post office closes.

I'm encouraging customers to buy multiple quantities as a gift for someone else.

[RandyAitch]

We're an arts & crafts business (currently in a store inside Dollywood).  Regardless of our location, Black Friday has always brought tons of people and proportionally lower sales.  Small Business Saturday is the big hit in our field.

[homeprogreen]

Honestly I ignore it. I used to do big Black Friday sales but what I found was that while I moved a lot more products that I didn’t see much of an increase in profit because of the steep discount. Plus then I had to restock the items. Sometimes one of my vendors will offer a few items at a highly discounted price point for shops to use as door busters so I will grab some of them in limited quantities 

[cashaber]

FULL PRICE BABY THE SUCKERS,,, errr customers are standing in line at the door

[goodground]

I don't do any sales for black friday