One Product Sold Every 1.5 Seconds During BF Peak
Consumers in New Zealand and Australia flocked to shops
last week eager to seek out the incredible deals that have
come to be associated with Black Friday. Having adopted the
US retail tradition in recent years many local companies,
like online shopping site Mighty Ape, were happy to oblige
customers with Black Friday deals, resulting in a
win-win situation for customers and retailers
alike.
To put into perspective the demand for Mighty Ape’s Black Friday deals, new orders on Thursday and Friday rolled in at a rate of one product ordered every three seconds on average for 48 hours. During the peak sales hour between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Thursday night, one product was ordered every 1.5 seconds.
Mighty Ape gave paid members of their Primate subscription service early access to the Black Friday Sale from Thursday morning, before extending access to the general public later in the afternoon. Many customers eager for a first look at Mighty Ape’s Black Friday offerings subscribed to Primate to take advantage of the early access. In the four days prior to Black Friday, new Primate subscriptions were up over 1200% compared to the first two weeks of November. On Thursday when the early access period started almost 1,000 customers became new Primate members.
Black Friday created a massive surge in orders resulting in the two biggest sales days in Mighty Ape’s 11-year history. Staff worked eagerly to dispatch Black Friday orders resulting in another record-breaking day on Monday, December 2nd - the most orders shipped in a single day.
To conquer the mountain of Black Friday orders, Mighty Ape added additional staff and extended warehouse operation hours from their regular 10-hour shift to 16-hours, 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. NZ Post also brought on extra planes, trucks, vans, and staff to assist.
“Black Friday has picked up momentum in NZ and become a key shopping event for Kiwis. Many local retailers prepared for the event this year and we were no exception. A lot of work went into our sale starting months in advance,” commented Gracie MacKinlay, Chief Marketing Gorilla at Mighty Ape.
“The high participation of retailers and the quality of the sales this year helped to make this event the biggest shopping day for many retailers. Black Friday fell on November 29th this year; later than in recent years. Being so close to Christmas made this year's Black Friday even more massive.”
Mighty Ape’s Christmas
shopping season is off to a record-breaking start. They have
just kicked off their annual 24 Days of Christmas promotion
in which Mighty Ape will give away over $30,000 of
prizes. This will no doubt lead to more wins for
customers and the popular online retailer in the coming
weeks.
About Mighty Ape:
Mighty Ape is
New Zealand owned and operated, NZ’s largest online
pure-play retailer. Their 10,000m2 Distribution Centre is
based in Millwater, Auckland and currently holds about one
million products. They offer overnight delivery NZ-wide and
same day delivery to eligible areas in Auckland, Wellington
and Christchurch. Mighty Ape has a 4.9/5 rating on Google
for customer satisfaction based on 26,000+
reviews.