Dubai: Move over, Black Friday. UAE online retailers have jumped on the bandwagon with its global peers to launch Cyber Monday deals.
Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopping day of the year, offers all the holiday deals without the holiday crowds. It follows Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the Unites States when retailers offer huge discounts to kick off the Christmas sales season.
Global retailers have launched their Cyber Monday deals a few days earlier to capture demand, such as Wal-Mart and Toys R Us. Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer by revenue, rolled out its Cyber Monday deals on Sunday.
Retailers in the UAE have launched their Cyber Monday deals at different times, offering discounts on clothing, consumer electronics, cosmetics and other retail product categories.
Wamli, an online home design store, decided to roll out its Cyber Monday deals early, offering discounts of up to 70 per cent off for all of the products on the site from Sunday.
JadoPado, an online consumer electronics retailer, has combined Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales together, calling it a Black Friday Sale.
“Over the years, it’s turned into a sales weekend from being a specific day. It started off as Black Friday happening in physical stores, and then spread to the online world doing Cyber Monday to compete, and now it’s turned into a four-day event,” said Omar Kassim, JadoPado’s chief executive.
Demand has been strong since the company’s four-day sale started, although it was weaker on Friday “assumedly, due to Friday traditionally being a day of rest in the region”, he said.
He expects strong sales to continue into Monday.
“Given that it is the end of the month and we’re effectively in the ‘payday’ week for the region, I’m hopeful that the trend will continue into Cyber Monday,” he said.
JadoPado’s November sales are likely to grow by 5-10 per cent compared to the previous month, he said.
Retailers in the UAE are launching Cyber Monday deals to capitalise on the growth of online shopping here, said Colin Beaton, managing director of retail consultancy Limelight Creative Services.
“Online retailing has grown significantly in the UAE in the last few years,” he said, adding that Cyber Monday deals drive sales and traffic.
On the other hand, Diana Jarmalaite, research analyst at consultancy Euromonitor International, said that she does not “expect a huge effect of this sales campaign on the overall market due to the limited involvement of retailers.”
“Cyber Monday is a sales concept that is new to the market,” she added.
Cyber Monday sales are forecast to reach $3 billion (Dh11 billion) in the US in 2015, up 12 per cent from a year ago, according to software firm Adobe Systems.
Cyber Monday’s origins go back to when consumers started using high-speed internet to buy goods they were not able to buy during the weekend after Thanksgiving.
