Black Friday for people who sell second-hand
Almost everything written about Black Friday assumes you are a retailer with a supplier, a margin and a warehouse. We are not that.
So here is the second-hand seller's version.
So here is the second-hand seller's version.
You probably cannot win on price
A retailer discounting 30% bought at wholesale and planned it in June. You bought one of a thing at a boot sale. If you discount to match, you are working for nothing.
What you have instead is the item they cannot get. Black Friday drives enormous traffic to the platform, and a meaningful chunk of it is people who could not find what they wanted in the sales. That is your customer.
What you have instead is the item they cannot get. Black Friday drives enormous traffic to the platform, and a meaningful chunk of it is people who could not find what they wanted in the sales. That is your customer.
What actually works
Be findable. The traffic is already there — you do not need to create demand, you need to appear. Titles that match what people type, specifics filled in, categories right.
Use the promotional tools that cost you nothing until they work. Offers to watchers, volume discounts, markdown on the slow stuff. Free to set up, only cost you when something sells.
Clear the dead stock. This is the honest best use of Black Friday for most of us. That thing that has not sold in eight months — this is the weekend somebody buys it. Take the loss, free the space, move on. Cash in November is worth more than optimism in March.
Do not discount what is already selling. If it moves at full price it will move at full price this weekend too.
Use the promotional tools that cost you nothing until they work. Offers to watchers, volume discounts, markdown on the slow stuff. Free to set up, only cost you when something sells.
Clear the dead stock. This is the honest best use of Black Friday for most of us. That thing that has not sold in eight months — this is the weekend somebody buys it. Take the loss, free the space, move on. Cash in November is worth more than optimism in March.
Do not discount what is already selling. If it moves at full price it will move at full price this weekend too.
The trap
Every year people drop prices across the board on the Thursday, get a good weekend, and then discover in December that they sold their best stock at 20% off a fortnight before the highest-demand period of the year.
December is when scarcity works in your favour. Do not empty the shelves in November.
December is when scarcity works in your favour. Do not empty the shelves in November.
The other trap
The volume is genuinely high and it lands on top of everything else. If you take forty orders over the weekend and cannot pack them until Wednesday, you have converted a good weekend into a pile of late dispatches and unhappy buyers right when your metrics matter most.
Be honest about how many orders you can physically handle. It is better to have a quieter weekend than a bad December.
Be honest about how many orders you can physically handle. It is better to have a quieter weekend than a bad December.
What did yours look like?
For anyone who has done a few: does Black Friday actually move the needle for you, or is it just a busy weekend that borrows from December?
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