ParcelHero is forecasting an £8.49bn monster Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend. It warns that stores must learn from the disaster of Black Friday 2014 or delivery chains could snap once again this year. Head of consumer research, David Jinks says online sales are already up 53 per cent YOY, because of the impact of the pandemic. Add the surge in demand created by the Black Friday sales extravaganza and he fears we could be in for a repeat of the now-infamous 2014 delivery traumas.
‘We believe Black Friday 2020 must either be halted in its tracks or spread through the first two weeks of December to give retailers’ delivery partners a fighting chance. In France, Amazon and other major stores have just agreed to postpone Black Friday sales until December when France’s own lockdown ends. Why can’t the same happen here?
‘Last year, 387 million of the 462 million Christmas peak deliveries were online shopping orders. This year, retailers’ deliveries alone will put an estimated 592 million parcels in the system in the weeks before Christmas. Due to Black Friday, this Mount Everest of Christmas peaks will spike between 27-30 November – still inside the critical lockdown period in England.
‘It really does seem the black cloud of Black Friday 2014 is rolling in once more. The date 28 November 2014 is seared in the memories of many retailers and delivery companies – not to mention their customers. As Black Friday 2014 dawned, there were early scuffles in High Street stores, with Asda customers reportedly snatching products from other shoppers. The Tesco Extra at Silverburn, Glasgow, was forced to shut for some hours after fighting broke out amongst shoppers desperate for a bargain.
‘As a result, huge numbers of consumers decided enough was enough, abandoned the scrum and hit the internet. Black Friday shoppers spent a then-record £810m online.
‘The problem was that no-one was prepared for this scale of online ordering. Nearly one in three (31 per cent) online shoppers experienced problems with their orders that Christmas, 49 per cent suffered from missed deliveries due to overstretched companies’ erratic delivery patterns, while 45 per cent experienced late deliveries or never received their goods.
‘The spike in online orders caught many of the UK’s most respected brands off-guard. The likes of AO, M&S, River Island, Currys-PC World, Shop Direct and Debenhams all admitted to disruptions to their delivery networks in fulfilling the record amount of orders.
‘What was a struggle for retailers became a pitched battle for delivery companies. Yodel was forced to stop picking up parcels from retailers as it struggled under the weight of demand.
‘Even Amazon found itself very overstretched. It’s widely believed that this was the reason Amazon was forced into creating its own logistics arm. Amazon now delivers between 7-10 per cent of all UK parcels at Christmas.’
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