The real cost of Black Friday: why Carlow shops lose out every year

I LOVE a bargain as much as the next person, but I believe the whole concept of Black Friday and Cyber Monday has destroyed retailing around Christmas time. I know I am in the minority when it comes to this one – just look at the statistics from AIB alone. Last year their customers spent €120 million that day on a total of over one million transactions.

Between 10am and 11am on Black Friday 2024, AIB customers – theirs is the only data I have to hand – there were a total of 68,000 transactions, or one every 19 seconds. Mind blowing when you think about it.

And the trend is only going the one way, up. It is estimated there is an annual 10 per cent increase of online spending year on year, which means come this Friday, 28 November, the average spend will be even more.

And remember we haven’t got to Cyber Monday, the absolute favourite day of the year for those looking to buy electrical goods online. But strangely enough, or maybe not so when you think about the mere size of some of the ‘white’ goods on offer – this sector is recording an increase of in-store shopping of seven per cent year on year.

The whole tradition of Black Friday started in the US city of Philadelphia in the 1950s, when the phrase was coined by the local police force to describe the chaos of the day after Thanksgiving, due to large crowds from both shoppers and the army-navy football game in the city at the same time.

The phrase was later adopted by retailers in the 1980s who put a positive spin on it to encourage pre-Christmas spending and get people in the mood to part with their hard-earned cash on the assumption that they were going to get their hands on a bargain.

But sadly, as with all clever ideas, there are consequences. Shopping online is here to stay, but while it is extremely convenient, it does mean that your money does not necessarily stay in the locality or even the country.

I was looking up one such site last week in the belief that this was really an Irish owned website. It looked Irish, the products on display were ones similar to what I see in shops locally but when I did a deep dive, I discovered that the item I had selected was actually going to be shipped from Canada.

As much as I liked the item, I chose to leave the site and opt instead to purchase a similar product from a shop in town. I’m sure it was made in the same factory somewhere outside of Ireland, but that wasn’t the key factor for me. The money was going over the counter in Carlow, so hopefully my contribution to the day’s takings might make some difference to the retailer in question.

It wasn’t a major spend but every little helps and if you think about 68,000 transactions online by just AIB customers alone in one hour last year, just imagine how much money is being taken out of the Irish economy by online shopping.

Then there is the whole notion of whether you are getting a bargain or not. Two years ago, I asked a jewellery retailer if he had any bargains for Black Friday and fair play to him – he instantly answered with “I have bargains every day of the week, not just one day in the year”.

He quickly followed up by informing me that what he sold as bargains, were stock from his current range not items he had left over from last year nor ones he had jacked up the prices over the previous couple of weeks so that he could reduce them on Black Friday.

Anyone who knows me also knows I am not one who can go into a shop and buy off the rack. Anything I purchase needs a little manipulation to say the least and that you can not buy online. No matter what the price tag says or how much has been slashed off the original purchase price, it will make no difference to me unless I can try it on and get the expert to let it out a little here, shorten it a little there and tuck it in God knows where. That tops any perceived bargain as far as I am concerned.

And what about the whole concept of giving a guarantee to someone. That is easily honoured if the item was purchased locally and all you have to do is call back into the shop where you bought said item – not so easy if first you have to find out exactly where it came from and then put your money in your pocket to pay for the postage, with no guarantee of success that the item eventually reaches its final destination.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are here to stay – there is no getting away from that – but in our haste to get a so-called bargain and cut down on expense this Christmas, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater and in doing so forget about our local retailer who is here 365 days of the year, offering value for money and a lot more.