Finally Some Real 12V Black Friday Data

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Car stereo sales

Data from 100 car audio dealers, large and small, showed that sales were up dramatically this year over Black Friday and Small Business Saturday combined for many car audio specialists.

The retailers saw an increase of almost 50 percent in sales over last year while average ticket sales remained the same as last year or at $358.45 compared to $357.08 in 2014, reported Avidworx’ businessWORX.  The retailers are all members of the  businessWORX program so their sales data is automatically tabulated in near real time.

“The fact that average tickets stayed the same meant there wasn’t a lot of excessive discounting going on. You weren’t getting spending on $49 radios. You are selling profitable products,” said BusinessWORX’ Ben Vollmer.

As for the spike in sales this year, Vollmer said, “I was actually surprised at the jump in volume. It was fairly significant, almost 50 percent.”   He didn’t have an explanation for the sharp increase.

About 85 percent of the 12 volt customers over the Black Friday weekend were new customers. Last year, about 75 percent of the customers over the weekend were new customers but retailers only converted 20 percent of them to clients who purchased again during the year. So the challenge is to market to these customers after Black Friday, said Vollmer.

He gave an example—“I had one retailer who did nothing but an email blast on Wednesday,” said Vollmer. The dealer looked at names in his data base that had never bought from him, names he might of collected at a show or customers who had come in for a quote but who never purchased. He produced $20,000 in sales just from that list alone last week.

Vollmer’s suggestions for Black Friday:

Start negotiating some door busters with vendors in August and September

Make sure you have a step up plan so if you are advertising one-way remote starts, you have a sales path to move customers to two-way versions.

Businssworx found that any kind of marketing works, you don’t need a $10K campaign. Spending $40 to boost your  your Facebook posts is very effective, as is sending emails to your client list.

Then, after BlackFriday, remember to send emails during the year to all those first-time customers you attracted, to get them back in the store.

Photo is of Sound of Tri-State during a past Black Friday.

 

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4 Comments

  1. JL –
    Thanks for the comments. It comes down to the demographics of your clients. For the shop I owned and sold, the demographics don’t fit. (And that shop is a MESA Member.) In talking with other retailers, my personal view of Black Friday has changed dramatically. Four years ago I would have never even thought about it. Now? For the right demographics, I would be all over it. And it doesn’t have to be Black Friday. It could be ANY sale.

    I think bait and switch is bad. (But I don’t recall commenting on an article recently.) Having one of an item for sale is bad. But what is good is having a well thought out step up program. The door buster may be a single button remote start. The step up should be well thought and done as a sales strategy. Same way with head units. You want to make sure you have a path from one SKU to another SKU. That isn’t bait and switch. That is careful planning.

    What I have learned now in seeing a ton of sales data, working with over 100 retailers and talking with many more is that if Black Friday is going to be a success for your business, it needs to be planned. Thought out. Worked on. You just can’t think about it the week before Thanksgiving and expect awesome results. The retailers I know that make it a success start planning 3 months in advance.

    I hope November and December are the two most profitable months they can be for our industry, regardless of the business model the retailer chooses.

    Ben

  2. There were a couple of responses to last weeks article about Black Friday specials and the MESA group. I hope those guys are reading this article and maybe rethinking whether to take part in black Friday or not. I can tell you that I used to have a similar feeling about Black Friday as the two respondents did. Finally about 6 years ago we decided to try out a Black Friday event and we couldn’t believe the response we had. Each year it got bigger. Last year was our first time of doing a weekend event and after that weekend we wished that we would have done it every year since being open (14 years). Ben you made a comment about the “specialists” pulling bait and switch tactics during black Friday sales. I’m not going to speak for everybody in the group although I know all of them very well and I know how they advertise. My advertising did not have any bait and switch tactics going on. All of my advertising was very well laid out and each item in my ad explained what was and was not included. It also explained when an item had limited quantities and told the customer what the sale price would be after the limited quantities ran out, so I take a little offense to your accusing us of bait and switch. As far as breaking MAP….. I didn’t do anything that was not authorized by the manufactures. What I can tell you is that we had a record weekend and record month thanks to a very successful black Friday weekend. There are all kinds of business types in our industry. Maybe black Friday type promos aren’t your cup of tea or work for your business. I can tell you that it is for our business and we will keep doing them. As you said, you get some business from black Friday retailers after the weekend is over but I guarantee you aren’t getting the type of business that your competitor is that takes part in it. And if your local competitor is a MESA member, he or she is doing it with far more success and profitability. Again, I know of some shops that black Friday doesn’t go along with their business plan. It works incredibly well for ours and we are not some stack em high and let em fly type shop. We perform all types of installs. I suggest you rethink the whole black Friday thing. You might be a high end shop, and if so that is awesome. I guarantee that you can figure out a way to make a black Friday event work for you and your clients. We asked our customers over the weekend and a majority of them love the excitement and killer deals that come along with black Friday. I hope the rest of your holiday season is great.

    1. Hey JL – Sorry, I clicked the wrong area and wrote a much longer response if you get a chance.

      Thanks!
      Ben

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