Black Friday Week 2023: updates from Digitec Galaxus

How are the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales doing? Better than last year? Which deals are proving particularly popular? Can our logistics cope with the onslaught? These are the questions upon questions we get asked by journalists come November. We’re happy to share our insights here – and maybe you, the Digitec Galaxus Community, are interested in knowing too.

Live ticker – how the week is going

Summary of the week

Digitec Galaxus has successfully brought the first Black Friday Week to a close. Irene Portmann, Project Manager of Black Friday Week at Digitec Galaxus, is extremely satisfied: «Extending the week from seven to eight days helped us to spread the traffic load even further over the entire week. Nevertheless, Black Friday remained by far the day with the highest sales.»

Even so, the logistics team had a lot to do during the week. During the entire eight days, significantly more orders were received than in the previous year. Thanks to good preparation and a great team effort in the warehouses during the promotional week, all parcels were dispatched on time.

Monday, 27 November – Cyber Monday

After a strong weekend came Cyber Monday, bringing a raft of new deals along with it. And it's gone down a treat. We've seen a significant increase in traffic to our shops compared to a typical November Monday. Our newsletter, which has been keeping our customers in the loop about our latest deals, has played a significant part in this.

Toys have once again proved to be a big hit. Our online shoppers seem to be taking advantage of the promotional week to buy Christmas presents for their children. After all, they need to buy them anyway, so why not get them at a reduced price?

Saturday and Sunday, 25-26 November – a bumper shopping weekend

Friday evening and the weekend saw the customers come pouring in once again. It's likely that people had a little more time on those days to browse through our offers and find what they were looking for. Significantly more orders were placed during this period than on a typical weekend.

Even so, our logistics team stayed strong despite the workload. In a nutshell, we used the weekend to build on a successful week and a strong Friday.

Friday, 24 November – Black Friday

4:30 p.m.

Looking at the day so far, it seems Black Friday has been relatively relaxed. Just like last year, we were able to spread the rush well over the week. Overall, we're very satisfied with the traffic and orders placed.

From your comments, we've noticed that some online shoppers would welcome back the familiar single Black Friday promotion day. From our point of view, however, this new approach has so far been a success, providing relief on all sides and ensuring prompt parcel deliveries. The majority of customers also seem to appreciate being able to benefit from offers for a whole week.

1 p.m.

With half the day gone, we're taking a look at the situation so far:

A few night owls already clicked through the new deals starting at midnight. The order volume within the first hour of Black Friday is on par with last year.

As things stand, most orders on Digitec and Galaxus were placed between 9 a.m. and 10.30 a.m. Overall, slightly more orders have been placed so far than at this time last year.

Our logistics department was able to cope well with the volume of orders from the last few days and can now focus on those that have just come in. We're satisfied with how the quantity of orders has been distributed so far and haven't yet reached the limits of our capacity.

The first Digitec product of the night to sell out was a graphics card from ASUS, and that at 00.12 a.m. Overall, many headphones, monitors, notebooks and smartphones are already sold out at this point. The first Galaxus product to sell out this morning was a dowelling machine. This was followed shortly thereafter by a Lego ship and Playdough modelling clay.

8 a.m.

A few bargain hunters were out and about in our shops at midnight, but there wasn't a huge rush during the early hours of Black Friday. The shops remained stable throughout the night. This is partly due to the fact that we were well-prepared and spread the deals over the entire week to avoid a huge peak in orders on Friday.

At Digitec, graphics cards and smartphones proved the products of choice once the clock struck midnight. Shopping carts at Galaxus, on the other hand, were filled with toys. Protein bars and Fanta were also surprisingly popular tonight.

Tuesday to Thursday, 21 to 23 November – time for a breather

After a strong start on Monday, our logistics team worked at full speed to start the week and process all orders received. Thankfully, by Tuesday evening, we were able to absorb the rush from Monday and the weekend. Orders on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were slightly up from the previous year's level. We're well-prepared for Black Friday itself, where we're expecting an increased order volume despite the deals being spread over the whole week.

Toys and sportswear are proving very popular at Galaxus, with many deals already sold out. So far, Digitec customers have honed in on smartphones and monitors.

In the midst of Black Friday Week, we've got something to celebrate: on Tuesday, we broke a historic record and received our one hundred millionth order at Digitec Galaxus: a pair of gloves. Although this wasn't a deal from our promotion week, the customer in question can still get excited about snagging a surprise that'll be delivered to her mailbox.

Monday, 20 November – start of Black Friday Week

Our shops kicked off Black Friday Week right on time at midnight, and the first bargain hunters were quick to pounce. From the technical side, everything went smoothly, the shops remained stable and, as expected, the rush during the night wasn't too great.

The most popular products were toys (especially the Lego Christmas tree, the Bruder toy car and the Brio wooden railway) and smartphones. A number of these were already sold in the first few minutes after the start of Black Friday Week. The first product to sell out was Lexar's SSD hard drive, gone within the first hour after midnight.