There is a general hustle associated with this time of the year.

Discounted items, giveaways and deals that are most times too good to be true; brands are locked into the race to offer customers some larger than life promise that will cause them to open their hearts and their wallets.

Of all the deals making the rounds, Black Friday is one of the biggest. A mouth watering promise to offer you stuff at a truly ridiculous discount.

The question is how can brands afford to offer you that low a price on their celebrated Black Friday deals and not get burnt profit-wise?

The answer might lie in the history behind the day.

The story behind the Black Friday concept sounds like something from a movie. It incorporates three separate occurrences that resulted in the tag ‘Black Friday’ that we know and enjoy today.

Two chaps orchestrated a financial gold heist in the US stock market, buying up all the gold in anticipation of a price hike so as to sell and make some mouth watering profit.

Unfortunately, the stock market crashed and the day was unceremoniously known from then on as ‘Black Friday.’

Also, in that period, accountants had a weird practice of writing down (there were no laptops then) profit sales in black and losses in red ink.

Finally, the Philadelphia police in anticipation of the rush to buy stuff after the thanksgiving holidays are over and businesses open again, named the holiday aftermath in honour of the gold stock market crash, calling it ‘Black Friday.’

You get the connection, yet?

An upsurge in after holiday sales that will skyrocket profits and get the shop accountants writing with black ink all day named after an infamous market crash.

Now back to the market forces powering Black Friday. What sales dynamics will allow a store owner sell items as low as 80% off and not go bankrupt in the process?

The answer oftentimes lies in hype. Black Friday as notorious as the day is for slashing prices and offering amazing discounts, has not always functioned honestly.

The truth is there is no department in charge of checking out claims of deals and price cuts that businesses make on Black Friday, so the businesses often exaggerate their offerings in a bid to attract customers.

Now, I know that it sounds like a totally illegal thing to do but the businesses are not obliged to offer discounts and deals in the first place, so their coming out to offer one, even though marginally exaggerated, cannot be totally faulted, can it?

Anyway, Nigeria is notorious for making Black Friday claims that aren’t altogether true. Peddling numbers that don’t make any sense when matched against the percentage claim.

For example, a beautifully handcrafted, suede Chelsea boot is now going for N15,000, courtesy of a Black Friday deal that puts the new price at a 70% off deal.

Great, right?

If you are nerdy enough to reverse engineer the numbers, you will find out that the cost before the price slash was something in the region of about N50,000.

Hard to believe, right?

A lot of the mind blowing offers made on Black Friday are merely exaggerated efforts to get you to notice fledgling brands.

My advice would be to slow your roll on buying everything that claims to be slashed considerably, because if the deals were truly that amazing the shop owners might probably not be offering them to you in the first place.

source: https://tushmagazine.com.ng/the-black-friday-story-and-other-concerns/

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lalasticlala, mynd44, dominique