Originally an American concept for the Friday after Thanksgiving and far more recently turned into a means of incentivising sales for the start of the Christmas campaign, the whole of Spain has now joined in, with shops looking to get consumers to start buying earlier for Christmas.
El Corte Inglés will kick off tomorrow, and its discounts will last until Sunday, when shops along Jaume III will be open. The retailer is expecting “very strong sales” because of “heavy discounts on all items,” these including, therefore, clothing, accessories, electrical and electronic goods and travel. This will be the third year that El Corte Inglés has been part of the Black Friday campaign, one now considered to be “an established promotion” that “the public is aware of.”
Alcampo will open Friday from 7am to midnight in order to allow all consumers to benefit from its discounts. Some of its offers, the retailer says, will be “surprises” that will be revealed on the day, while there will also be “flash offers” which crop up every half an hour.
MediaMarkt is also starting a day early, i.e. Thursday, and has discounts on a range of goods, such as laptop computers and tablets, televisions, games consoles, smartphones and smartwatches. Films and series on Bluray and DVD will be available at up to 50% off. Another electronic outlet, K-tuin, the Apple store, will be staying open until 2am Friday morning and will re-open at 9am and stay open until 9pm. (Hours on Saturday will be 10am to 9pm.)
For toys, Imaginarium will have discounts of 15% on all products, while Toys “R” Us will be offering reductions of up to 50% for the whole week. Even car showrooms are getting in on the act, with Autovidal offering 30% off on new cars tomorrow, Friday and Saturday.
Other large retailers who will have offers include Carrefour, Worten and Decathlon, but Black Friday is not confined to the larger stores. Smaller retailers, thanks to a collaboration between the Pimeco and Afedeco retail associations and Palma town hall, will be involved in a series of activities in the centre of Palma.
These will start with a street show by the Urban Soul dance academy at 7pm Friday, which is when shops normally start to close but when the Christmas lights will go on (at 7.30 pm). The aim is to give shop owners “more reasons than ever” to stay open up until midnight. The Urban Soul group will perform in different places and a demons’ gang will have its own itinerary through the streets. These performances will continue until 11pm. The prospects for sales are reckoned, therefore, to be good and so build on last year, the first time the smaller retailers had taken part.
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