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Black Friday to cost retailers 180 million pounds in returns

By Danielle Wightman-Stone

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Black Friday could cost UK retailers 180 million pounds from consumers returning goods bought in the 24-hour flash sale, according to retail intelligence company Clear Returns.

The research has revealed that UK retailers stand to lose 130 million pounds from handling returns of items bought on Black Friday, while costs relating to lost margins, cleaning, storing, oversupply of stock and the lost value of future custom from the shopper could add an additional 50 million pounds to the returns bill.

"What retailers must remember is a sale is only a sale when a customer decides to keep an item – and the promise of a Black Friday discount alone might not be enough to close the expectation gap and secure a ‘keep’," Vicky Brock, founder and chief executive of Clear Returns, told The Telegraph. "While on the surface, Black Friday is deemed to be a successful key trading day, but it’s a gloomier picture once returns are factored in."

Clear Returns is stating that the returns process from Black Friday can tie up retailers systems in the run-up to Christmas and that by mid-December 600 million pounds worth of stock will be preventing retailers from selling items during the crucial sales period.

This will peak on December 12, which Clear Returns has named ‘Out of Stock Saturday,” when the largest number of retailers will suffer from having returned stock tied up in the returns process. Meaning that using the sales day to get rid of excess stock might not be the right strategy.

This year’s Black Friday is expected to be the biggest yet in the UK, with bargain shoppers expected to spend 1.07 billion pounds online, up from 810 million pounds last year, according to Experian-IMRG. It is predicted that November 27 will be the first time that internet sales in the UK surpass 1 billion pounds in a single day.

Black Friday
clear returns