How Mighty Ape is preparing for biggest sales day of the year

Wednesday, 16 November 2022

Gracie MacKinlay, chief executive of Mighty Ape, talks about Black Friday sales and what it is doing to prepare.

Online retailer Mighty Ape is gearing up for the busiest sales day of the year.

Black Friday has been the Auckland-based ecommerce business’s biggest sales day of the year for the past five years. For most retailers sales volumes on that day surpass that of Boxing Day, which traditionally was the country’s biggest sales day of the year.

Black Friday takes its name from the concept of sales registers going from 'in the red” to “in the black” meaning sales are booming. The sales event originated in the United States as the day after Thanksgiving. It is considered the event that kicks off the Christmas shopping season.

It has been gaining momentum and widely adopted by New Zealand retailers, who typically use the day to offer significant discounts and special deals to get rid of older stock.

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Black Friday has become a four-day spending weekend, with sales starting on Friday and ending on Monday, Cyber Monday, which has more deals available online.

Overseas the weekend is known to cause chaos with eager bargain hunters often seen traipsing over each other to get hold of goods.

Mighty Ape has been at work on its strategy plan for Black Friday for most of the year.

Mighty Ape has hired 70 more staff to help fulfil Black Friday orders.

Chief executive Gracie MacKinlay said Mighty Ape had hired 70 temporary staff to help with order fulfilment starting with Black Friday and had been working closely with suppliers and manufacturers to source and bring in more goods ahead of the event.

It has promised “some of the best deals of the year” with significant discounts on TVs, games and PCs, furniture and appliances, Christmas trees.

“Black Friday is everyone’s top priority at the moment,” MacKinlay said.

“The last six months we’ve been working to secure the deals, working with suppliers and manufacturers getting deals ready.”

The ecommerce site has scheduled “all hands on deck days” meaning staff from all departments - along with management – will be required to boot up and help fulfil orders in the warehouse.

MacKinlay said she would be among staff picking and dispatching orders. She said Black Friday was always exciting but stressful each year.

Gracie MacKinlay says Black Friday kicks off the typically busy Christmas shopping season.

Last year Mighty Ape sold more than 100,000 products during the four-days.

“Customers have realised it is the best day to shop, and they gear up and save up for those days.

“This is when the bottleneck starts occurring.”

Social distancing requirements put the spanner in the works for Mighty Ape last year, as well as couriers because it could not keep up with delivery demand.

But MacKinlay said she was hopeful it would be smooth sailing this year with couriers back to normal and the addition of Mighty Ape’s own delivery service, Jungle Express.

Sales volumes for Mighty Ape on Black Friday typically increased year-on-year. MacKinlay predicted that spending would be the same as last year, if not bigger.

“Each year Black Friday is a record year, every year sales are higher than the last.

Mighty Ape clocked 100,000 orders during Black Friday last year.

“Last year was a special year as we were in lockdown and spending had to be online, so it is harder to predict what growth will look like this time round.”

MacKinlay took over as chief executive in June. She joined the company in 2012 as an analyst and has headed the sales and marketing divisions.

She said Mighty Ape had more than quadrupled in size and sales over the past 10 years, and the retailer was now looking at options to expand its fulfilment operation because it was “running out of space again”.

Mighty Ape moved into its Silverdale 10,000m² warehouse in 2018.

The company was bought by Australian stock exchange-listed Kogan Group for $128m in 2020, during the nationwide lockdown.

Sales revenue at Mighty Ape surpassed $174m last year, up from $150m the previous year.

Mighty Ape operates similarly to retail giant Amazon.

Black Friday by the numbers

New Zealanders spent $243m over the sales weekend last year, according to figures from Worldline.

And insights from price comparison website PriceSpy show three in every five shoppers had previously made a purchase on Black Friday.

PriceSpy’s most recent consumer survey found that despite the rising cost of living about half of shoppers intended to make a purchase on Black Friday.

Compared to pre-pandemic in 2018, the number of people intending to shop on Black Friday has increased 18%. But when compared to last year’s survey, the intention was down 12%.

The cost of living and squeezed budgets seemed to be top of mind for consumers, with two in every five saying they would skip the sales this year.

PriceSpy noted that the drop in interest to buy discretionary items could be the result of shoppers increasingly wanting to spend any spare money on meaningful experiences such as travel and entertainment.

While respondentssaid they felt worried about the rising cost of living and fewer were looking to buy in the sales, of those who did intend to shop next week, 63% said they were looking to spend more than $500 on Black Friday – a 4% increase on last year’s response.

The average amount shoppers planned to spend was $730, PriceSpy found.