How 2020 Black Friday can help SMEs, consumers bridge revenue gap

By Ayomide Oriade

In every sphere of human endeavour, year 2020 alone has served up events and happenings that would have conveniently filled for three or four years combined.

On a global scale, Covid-19 brought economic activities to a halt for weeks. Even the strongest economies of the world are not left out.

The emerging post covid era is proving to be survival of the fittest. The effect on businesses has been dire, especially for SMEs. Many small businesses could not survive the lockdown.

Those who managed to scale through are still picking up the pieces. Consumers are also feeling the brunt.

Many people lost their jobs to the pandemic, while many have had their income slashed by employers as part of cost cutting measures.

Consequently, customers have become more frugal. There’s very little to go around, everyone wants the best deal on all spending, every kobo saved is like a new earning. Hence, essentials take priority on customers’ shopping list; and this is not helping matters for small businesses.

However, smart small business owners have come to terms with the present realities and are aware that the best way to have a share of customers’ pockets is to offer them an avenue to spend less for more.

They leverage platforms, big shopping events and campaigns to reach more customers and in turn make more sales. One of such effective platforms is the Black Friday sales which has become a global phenomenon.

Globally, Black Friday is known as the biggest shopping event of the year.

The actual origin was from the 1950’s when Philadelphia law enforcement officers used the term to describe the chaos that ensued when suburban shoppers and tourists flooded the city on the day after Thanksgiving.

In turn, the city was turned into a traffic nightmare for just that day which made the name stick.