Perhaps not just for the camera industry, but this is the one I know best and where I can best see what has been happening. I have spent some years at the front line of camera journalism and the heavily orchestrated sales bonanzas of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and to a lesser extent Amazon Prime Day.
These are seen as huge sales opportunities for the camera industry and the affiliate marketeers that depend on the revenue generated. Like it or not, most of the online content we now consume is funded by affiliate sales, and almost every content creator, large or small, will profit when you buy something.
So it’s no surprise that Black Friday is so hyped. It’s in everybody’s interest. It looks like a win-win-win situation, where manufacturers win from a sales spike, content providers win from increased affiliate revenue and the consumer wins with best-ever deals and price cuts.
Or maybe not.
I’ve seen two things going wrong here. One is that Black Friday is now a highly orchestrated, highly planned marketing and sales exercise. There are few discounts that haven’t been prepared, calculated and carefully set up with crafty price hikes ahead of time. And the biggest discounts of all are on products that have already had their time, like last year’s remnants in the January sales.
But most consumers are savvy enough to know this and can pick their way through all the hype and the fluff to the products that do actually represent a good deal for them.
The real harm, I think, is not to the consumer, but to the industry. After all…
Who buys anything when Black Friday is coming?
For weeks ahead of Black Friday, every buyer will have a dilemma. Do they buy now or wait for Black Friday in case the price drops? Some will buy anyway but a lot will wait. The result is that the sales splurge of Black Friday is preceded by deadly lull when sales are down and the whole industry is depressed.
Black Friday doesn’t increase the sales of camera gear, it just changes when it happens.
For the industry, that one week of frenzied buying is preceded by many weeks of weak sales. Even if companies are smart enough to see this – of course they are – Black Friday has become a bandwagon that they have to jump on because everybody else is doing it.
Yes, there are Black Friday bargains. There are bargains all year round if you keep your eyes open. But by hyping up this one-week bonanza, the industry isn’t making more sales, it’s just stealing them from the rest of the year.