We used to dream of a white Christmas, now it's all about a Black Friday. Well, for some. Reporting for The Business, Liam Geraghty met two retailers with very different opinions on the day that sees prices plummeting and bargains abound.
Abbas Barry is the managing director and founder of online company iclothing.com. He welcomes the day with open arms and extra software.
"We actually consider Black Friday the new Christmas… Over the last maybe two years, either Black Friday or Cyber Monday have been our busiest days of the entire year. The actual logistics of having servers and the hardware processing power to actually handle those spikes in traffic are massive, so we had to invest in additional servers to make sure the website doesn't go down and crash."
A contrasting stance is taken by owner, goldsmith and designer at Stonechat Jewellers, Ann Chapman.
"I'm really, really against the whole concept. We offer a premium service, a luxury product and we really value the service that we give and the time that we can give to customers. I would say there's a lot of pressure on a lot of retailers that they feel that they need to be doing what everybody else is doing. I would certainly feel pressure from people that I would work with, in marketing or in digital campaigns. Typically they are working with companies who are doing this and going hard after this and when I tell them absolutely not, we're going to go the other way, they can't understand it."
Ann warns that if you're going to go after the Black Friday crowd, you need to have the additional resources in place to ensure that the customer service doesn't suffer. Abbas is so busy ensuring that aspect of things is covered for his company that he's not sure he'll make it to the shops himself to take advantage of the slashed prices.
"I'll definitely have a browse online.. we'll see if we get lucky!"
Click here to listen to the report in full from The Business.