Black Friday: 50 days until the biggest logistics challenge of the year

On November 26th, that is, in exactly 50 days, a new edition of Black Friday will be held. A commercial event of American origin that has managed to establish itself with great force around the world in recent years.

Even with the Covid-19 pandemic very present and its inevitable commercial consequences, especially the disproportionate rise in sea freight prices (with a notable impact on trade between China and Europe), the traditional Black Friday will go ahead, despite the “metamorphosis” of the situation.

In this article, we offer you the keys and key aspects of the last edition of the most commercial Black Friday so that you can learn first-hand about the expectations and forecasts of D-Day logistics.

Collapse and rise in prices in maritime freight: How does it affect Black Friday 2021?

Over the past year and a half, electronic commerce has been faced squarely with different problems affecting its good development. One of the first setbacks for the ecommerce it has undoubtedly been a consequence of Covid-19: during the lockdown, many online stores were unable to meet the huge demand, thus causing various logistical problems and even the collapse. In addition, the now popular stranding of the Evergreen vessel and the consequent blockage of the Suez Canal, whose consequences were serious delays for many companies worldwide.

In the same way, in recent weeks, the well-known container crisis has spread, whose impact has shaken the world economy in addition to causing the closure of some ports, such as China. For the Asian country, the closure of a terminal of what is currently the largest port in terms of container traffic on a global scale has caused delays, difficulties as well as an uncertain future for all ecommerce, especially for the next edition of Black Friday 2021 and the Christmas season, the two periods with the highest number of sales in the entire year.

It should be emphasized that all of these problems in the logistics network have consequences not only in terms of delivery times, but also in terms of the final price for users (with a longer transport time, the higher the cost of transport).

And what's the alternative? Companies such as Alibaba have found air transport as a temporary alternative to be able to maintain their logistics operations, an interim solution that has allowed them to maintain the delivery times of their customers in the European market.

Forecasts for Black Friday 2021

Thanks to the article Black Friday 2021 statistics: 10 numbers you should know with the help of the company Oberlo, we offer you below a summary of some of the most significant statistics for the logistics sector ahead of the next edition of Black Friday.

Sales forecasts

Many users choose Black Friday as a special date to advance Christmas shopping with great discounts given the proximity between the two dates.

In fact, in the 2020 edition of Black Friday, sales were so high that they even represented 30% of annual revenue.

Despite not yet having forecasts for the Black Friday 2021 edition, from companies such as In Markerter estimate that in the United States alone, the increase in online sales by that date will be approximately 11.3%.

A third of Spanish adults plan to shop on Black Friday 2021

For this next edition of Black Friday, approximately 13 million Spaniards are expected to shop on the famous “Black Friday”. Of all of them, it is estimated that 78.41% will make their purchases in person while 21.59% will make them through e-commerce. With regard to age groups, it is estimated that it is precisely the generation that expects to spend the most throughout the day.

Average spending on Black Friday 2021

According to the company Deloitte, the average expenditure among Spaniards will be 127 euros during the Black Friday weekend, also including the well-known Cyber Monday. Thus, this average expenditure per person would mean that Spaniards will already spend 23% of the budget reserved for Christmas on Black Friday.

It should be noted that in other countries, such as Mexico, the average expenditure per citizen is 279 American dollars, a significantly higher outlay.

The best-selling products

The products most acclaimed by users for Black Friday are, first of all, technological products, with a total of 39.2% of total sales. Secondly, another big star of this important date are fashion products and accessories, with a total of 33.74% of sales. And finally, leisure and entertainment plans, which win the bronze medal in terms of sales, since they account for around 7.55% of the total.

Do you want Black Friday to be a success for your company? We have the solution! Visit our article Ecommerce: 5 essential tools to survive in 2021 to learn about the most interesting applications for your company.

Logistics trends in ecommerce

It is well known that parcel delivery companies have a lot of difficulty offering a good service during these dates. Neither infrastructures nor personnel are adapted to such a sharp increase in operations. For this and other reasons, a trend is starting to appear in large e-commerce. The internalization of delivery processes in areas with the highest order density.

Currently, only companies with a large number of warehouses (stores) and requirements such as the cold are betting on this change, such as Mercadona, which already distribute their own fleet of gas-powered vehicles. We will see this trend in big brands that are increasingly considering e-commerce. The objectives are clear, better services, lower costs, but also to achieve visibility in the offline world by being able to conspicuously label your vehicles that are constantly moving around the cities.

In these cases, we are looking at route planning tools such as Planner, are very useful for simulating different scenarios and finding optimal logistics performance and determining the return on investment in this type of project. Stay tuned, in future articles we will go into the details of this type of analysis.