Wednesday 26 November 2014

Black Friday - friend or foe?



The noise around Black Friday (28th November) is greater than ever this year and we understand that the big retailers are poised to fight for their share of the promotional spend just weeks before Christmas. Indeed, hot on the heels of Black Friday is Sofa Sunday and Cyber Monday! Is this all a great idea and how useful is it for confectionery retailers?

A recent piece of research from Verdict (October 2014) suggests that 47% of shoppers intend to purchase a promotion on Black Friday. This is certainly skewed towards the younger shopper with 56% of 15-24 year olds having that intention, 59% of 25-34 year olds and just 28% of those over 65 years.

The idea has come from the USA and seems set to stay on British soil, growing in impact year after year. Synics point out that retailers are simply eroding their margins by promoting at a time when sales are high anyway (Verdict Research states that £90.7bn is set to be spent on Christmas related items this year, up 2.6% from 2013). The problem is, when your competitor jumps in with a Black Friday promotion, you feel compelled to swiftly follow.

Love it or loathe it, Black Friday is here to stay. Is it relevant to confectionery retailers? Well the confectionery retail market is certainly much more fragmented and so it probably depends on your route to market (high street or online) and your customer profile. It is likely that there will be more noise online where a younger audience might be busier and competition is more widespread. If you feel like you’ve missed out on Black Friday, how about Cyber Monday instead?! For high street and local retailers, try to understand what is happening on a local level. You might want to steal the march and use it as a promotional event to get feet through the door or you might prefer to focus on keeping your margins intact and working as hard as possible on your customer service.

However you decide to react to Black Friday, be sure to see some silly deals on offer as the country winds up for the Christmas frenzy.

Friday 14 November 2014

Halloween hype



Hmmm, well this is interesting…contrary to my last post, I’ve seen reports of Halloween confectionery not performing so well this year. Is Halloween being over-hyped or did it work well for your business?

IRI data suggests that there was a decline in the sale of Halloween confectionery purchased from supermarkets in the region of 17%, down to £11.5m. But it is widely accepted that Halloween continues to grow in the USA (where the lead comes from) and of course, confectionery continues to see growth as a whole in the UK.

The figure stated is just for supermarkets so there might be a bit more to this story yet. Are we starting to buy more of our confectionery elsewhere, now that more and more shoppers make use of discount stores and local convenience shops during the week? Even our favourite sweetie shop! Maybe this reinforces the supermarket trend more than the Halloween one. 

From what I could see, Halloween was as big as ever this year and judging by the number of trick or treaters, confectionery was most definitely a key part of it!