The economy is weak according to most. And today is Black Friday. I expected most retail marketers to take advantage of this day of super-commerce by attempting to push out as much inventory as they could. However, this has not been the case.
Many, including myself, are finding this years black friday deals to be nothing extraordinary. When weekend sales numbers roll in, it’ll become obvious that this was a mistake by the marketers of this retailers. And there is a lesson to be learnt: When customers are ready to buy, sell! In other words “Strike when the iron’s hot!”
One of the big reasons Wal-Mart originally became successful was they were able to “turn” products faster. What is turn? Let me demostrate. Let’s say you have $100 in cash. You take that and buy products. You put it on the self and sell it for $110 in a day. The $10 profit is not important. What’s important is that you got $100 back in a day. You take the same $100 and buy more products, put them on the self and sell it in a day for $110. In 2 days, you’ve made $20 with the same $100. Each time you get your investment back and are to reinvest it for more profit is a turn. Compare that with a competitor, who might buy $100 of product, and sell it in a week for $120.
Retailers could have used today, Black Friday 2008, to drive up sales and turn products for a slightly less profit per product … but overall higher bottom-line. Instead, they elected to sell lame off-brand product products like this digital camera. If BestBuy offered me a $100 Canon digital camera, I might have bought it.
PS: I am not suggesting that price is the only thing that can drive up sales. I’m suggesting that on Black Friday, price is the key element that makes your offer remarkable compared to any other day.
