Australian fashion brand Kookai is pulling back on its Black Friday/Cyber Monday discounting this year in an ongoing initiative to retrain the customer.
Speaking with Ragtrader, Kookai creative director Bianca Vagner-Cromb said the business got itself into a pattern during COVID where the team relied heavily on promotions to drive sales.
“Coming out of that, we've really had to retrain the customer to show that we're not always going to be offering discounts and sales,” she said.
“The product that we're dropping in, we believe in - the price and the quality and all that. We're in a really great position now where we're not having to discount throughout the year.
“We're really just focusing on discounting during our end-of-season sales - so that mid-year and end-of-year sale.
“Black Friday for us, we're not really making that as much of a focus for the business anymore.”
Vagner-Cromb added that it's been a bit of a process retraining the customer to not expect that things will go on sale and to hold out for it.
“They kind of know now that things aren’t going on sale, and to snap them up really quickly, because things are selling so well and so fast that they don't want to miss out on the product anymore.
“A big learning curve for us is: always promoting and promotional offers and all of that is great at the time, but the long-term effects can be quite drastic.
“Coming out of it, it did take us a while, but thankfully, we're out of that place and in a completely different area, which is where we're struggling to keep up with demand.”
The latest move by Kookai comes as Roy Morgan expects record Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales this year.
Earlier this month, Roy Morgan predicted that overall Black Friday sales in Australia this year will hit $6.7 billion, an increase of 5.5 per cent on the same time last year. This will add to an expected $69.7 billion boost for retailers in the six-week lead-up to Christmas - up 2.7 per cent on last year’s figures.
According to Roy Morgan’s head of retail research, social and consumer trends Laura Demasi, participating in Black Friday sales is not optional anymore for retailers across the board.
“I don't know how this is going to go into the future, but this year? You all know that discounting and sales have been critical this year to staying afloat. This is no different. Just think back to the mid-year sales. It's critical to participate in Black Friday.”
Demasi spoke at the Australian Retailer’s Association Peak Season Breakfast 2024 last week, where she confirmed that the Black Friday boom this year will be driven by two key factors: online sales growth and consumers delaying purchasing to sales events.
“The mid-year sales this year was huge,” Demasi said. “I think the ABS online sales number for July was up 15 per cent of the previous year July.”
Demasi said Roy Morgan’s 5.5 per cent predicted lift for Black Friday is probably conservative.
“We have about 6.4 million Australians that say they plan to shop in the Black Friday sales,” she said. “As a result - we're not pitching this, but we’re seeing this as a new Christmas gift-shopping event.
“And we can back that up because we asked people. We did a poll last weekend, and asked, ‘Who's going to shop a Black Friday, and what are you going to buy?’
“We have 80 per cent of those people who are planning to shop in the sales are planning to buy Christmas gifts, but they're also planning to buy for themselves.
“About 60 per cent are planning to shop for themselves, and four in 10 of those planning to buy are expressly doing it to save money on Christmas presents.
“So this wraps up the two big trends of the year: more shopping online and delaying purchase to sales events.”