The wave of post-Thanksgiving discounts in the US has not only spread to the UK, but the sales drive has also hit the Czech Republic this year.
Rather than bricks-and-mortar stores, the new concept of Black Friday mainly concerns online retailers in the Czech Republic. With 100 discounted TV sets gone within 20 minutes, electronics retailer CZC.cz saw record one-day sales last Friday.
Selling a variety of products, Mall.cz said that its earnings were 120 per cent higher than on Thursday. Martin Charvát of the Konektor agency told iDnes.cz that online retailers were better placed to capitalise on the concept, as they don’t plan discounts as far in advance as their bricks-and-mortar competitors.
When it comes to big discounts, the problem with the Czech market is its size, analysts say. "Because of the small market, Czech retailers are buying in smaller volumes than their Western counterparts. Thus, they also get smaller margins, and therefore can offer smaller discounts," says Robert N?mec, owner of a Czech marketing agency.
Some retailers say that the concept of Black Friday could supplement another, decades-old discount tradition in Central Europe. In Central European countries, Sundays leading up to Christmas used to be referred to as bronze, silver and gold. On these Sundays, stores were open – an unusual phenomenon for the then Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
© 2014 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article written by László Juhász.
