Dimocks is one of the stores in town doing a Black Friday sale. Photo / Bevan Conley
While some are keen to open their wallets and spend, others frown at the consumerism of it all.
It’s Black Friday this week, and signs on shopfronts all around town as well as online advertising have made it no secret - but not all Whanganui businesses are keen on the big sales day.
Whanganui & Partners strategic lead of business Suzi Hepi said their data suggested a significant rise in spending happened in Whanganui because of the day.
Comparing Black Friday 2021 to the equivalent Friday of the month before, there was an 11.3 per cent boost in consumer spending, while on the Friday after, spending was down 6.3 per cent.
“We know consumer spend in general starts to pick up week-on-week in the lead-up to Christmas, but there is a notable rise on both Black Friday and the Saturday after it.
“Local businesses are great at making the most of opportunities like Black Friday, and it’s great to see that our business community is doing this and offering good competition to the online sales that people are familiar with,” Hepi said.
Mainstreet Whanganui manager Des Warahi said while Black Friday was relatively new to Whanganui, it did seem to have been embraced by the town if you were to go by sales data, and given the cost of living crisis, a sales event like Black Friday may be enticing for people looking to get their Christmas shopping done early.
However, within the Whanganui business community, he said, running the sales appeared to be more popular with national chain retailers rather than independent businesses.
Whanganui Chamber of Commerce chief executive Helen Garner said she hadn’t spoken to any business owners specifically about the sales, but the chamber had spoken about it in meetings.
“We do have an opinion on it, and our opinion is that we need to understand that these sales are a thing now and that people are spending money on this day,” she said.
Sales data suggests Black Friday may now be a more popular day for shoppers than Boxing Day, Garner said.
She understood how some retailers may be ideologically opposed to the sales, seeing Black Friday as something for Americans - but if so, they needed to be okay with extra sales going somewhere else.
Dimocks Whanganui is one of the stores holding a Black Friday event, and Nigel Bishop, the store’s owner, said they were doing so because they were told to by their head offices.
He said they had been holding the sales for the last eight or nine years, and found it had provided both an increase in sales and pulled the rush for Christmas gifts forward.
“It’s probably, if anything, pulled Christmas sales forward, so instead of having that normal December build-up, it kind of drag[s] them forward to this patch, and then we get a bit of a quiet period again,” he said.
Springvale Garden Centre is also holding a sale, which owner Gareth Carter said they were doing to get rid of excess stock.
“With the change of season, switching from the end of spring to the beginning of summer, there are some product lines that are better planted now and not held over for a bit later,” he said.
The centre has held Black Friday sales for the last two years and said both had been relatively successful, and they hoped the same would be true this year.
For shoppers, Whanganui Budget Advisory Service’s Sandy Fage said the sales weren’t an issue for people, but they should be mindful of whether or not the bargains they were getting were actually as good as they sounded.
“You kind of want people to get a bargain if they can, but if they’re getting a bargain at the expense of not being able to afford the required payments, it’s not gonna be a bargain, is it?”
However, Fage said this wasn’t an issue exclusive to Black Friday, and is something people deal with as the build-up to Christmas continues.
Last week, Consumer NZ warned shoppers to be wary when looking for a bargain, as their investigations found many big-box stores often inflated their recommended retail prices to make Black Friday prices seem more impressive than they were.
They recommended shoppers take steps like comparing prices online; not buying something just because the store claims it’s on sale; seeing if the salesperson would offer anything extra to sweeten the deal; thinking carefully before signing up for a ‘buy now, pay later’ deal; and ignoring pressure tactics when navigating the sales.