Black Friday Sales -- Europe Style

By Saabira Chaudhuri 

LONDON -- Europeans don't celebrate the uniquely American Thanksgiving holiday, but the so-called Black Friday sales that follow Turkey Day have become part of the fabric of year-end holiday shopping across much of the Continent.

In Britain, an early beachhead for such U.S.-style shopping extravaganzas, Black Friday yields similar cut-rate prices, long lines and occasional scuffles among shoppers. And just as in the U.S., many British retailers have s pread out their sales over several days, often starting well before the Friday after Thanksgiving.

More recently, however, there has been a bit of a backlash. Asda, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s U.K. unit that helped popularize the phenomenon three years ago said last year it would forgo Black Friday sales in the future.

"Feedback from our customers was clear that they didn't want the pressure of a 'flash sale' and preferred to know we were offering low prices throughout the festive season," an Asda spokesman said.

Though Thanksgiving may alien to many European shoppers, the shopping holiday attached to it isn't. "We've had a lot of people coming in," said Frank Boakye, a store associate at home-appliance retailer Robert Dyas on Queens Street in London's financial district on Thursday. Among bargains, the store is selling a five-piece aluminum cookware set and a Vax vacuum cleaner, both for 60% off the regular price.

Britain's largest supermarket chain Tesco PLC extended its Black Friday sales from four days last year to 11 days this year. The company is offering discounts on 650 items, up from 200 items last year and said 700 of its stores still plan to open their doors to customers at 5 a.m. on Friday.

The sales event has even made inroads in France, though most shoppers still struggle with its name. Last year, retailers dropped the Black Friday branding altogether after the Nov. 13 terror attack in Paris that killed 130 people, which also fell on a Friday.

Some French retailers have gone back to the original name this year, but not all. French supermarket group Auchan calls their sale "Un Crazy Weekend." Mail-order retailer La Redoute calls it "Le Grand Weekend."

Still, well-known retail chains, such as Fnac bookstore and consumer electronics outlets, Gap clothing stores and Casino supermarkets, plan to offer steep discounts in France on Friday and over the weekend to lure customers.

In Spain, El Corte Ingles, the country's premier department store and a pioneer of Black Friday sales there, is offering 50% discounts on some items. Casa del Libro, a major bookstore chain, is offering 70% discounts on online purchase between Nov. 21 and 28.

In an Elgiganten consumer-electronics store in central Stockholm on Thursday evening, shop assistants were finishing tagging laptops, phones and TV screens with price reductions of as much as 50%, as black banners embellished the shop's walls.

Employee Gustav Lindahl said he expects the number of visitors on Friday, when the store will be open from 7 a.m. through midnight, to be 12 times as high as on a normal day. "It's going to be chaos," he said.

--Matthias Verbergt in Stockholm and Nick Kostov in Paris contributed to this article.

Write to Saabira Chaudhuri at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 24, 2016 15:58 ET (20:58 GMT)

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