Black Friday: Profit or Pitfall? The Retail Game Plan for Indie Brands

Black Friday isn’t designed for indies, so why do so many small retail business owners still feel pressure to play?

In this episode of the Resilient Retail Game Plan, I pull you behind the screens and into the real numbers; sharing where the opportunities actually lie for UK product businesses come November, what the headlines miss, and how you can plan Black Friday on your own terms.

No boss babe myths.

No one-size-fits-all answers.

Just straight-talking product business advice from 25 years in the retail trenches.

I’ll help you squeeze more margin, build customer loyalty, and avoid the stress spiral—whatever you decide about Black Friday.

Why listen?

• Flip mainstream Black Friday thinking and capture the month’s biggest wins—for your bottom line and your values
• Squeeze more profit from your Q4, not just turnover
• Tame your promotions calendar, reduce customer “discount fatigue”
• Reward loyal customers in a way that fits your brand
• Use cash flow for retailers and inventory management podcast tactics to plan stock (not just hope for the best)
• Hear exactly how successful indie retailers choose, pace, and communicate their Black Friday offers—without losing themselves in the noise

DM me @resilientretailclub on Instagram with your Black Friday takeaways or guest ideas for the podcast. If this episode clears the fog, rate and follow the show in your favourite retail podcast UK app.

Mentioned in this episode:

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In today's episode, we're going to be talking about what Black Friday really means

for small businesses in 2025. Whether it's worth your time

and energy and if you do take part, how to run

promotions that protect your profit margins and play to your strengths rather

than just getting lost in all of the noise.

Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan. I'm Catherine Edley and in the

next few minutes, you're about to get powerful real world retail strategies

from insights shared both from my guests and myself, backed up by

my 25 years in the retail industry. Keep listening to learn how

to grow a thriving, profitable product business. Let's jump

in with this latest episode. Black Friday

2024 smashed records in the UK

with consumers spending over 1.12 billion online

in a single day. And across Black Friday to Cyber

Monday weekend, that number climbed to 3.63

billion. That's a 5% increase from the year

before, even in the middle of a cost of living crisis.

So this is a major shopping event.

The question is, how much of it can you capture as a small

product business? Because let's be honest, Black Friday

can feel like a double edged sword. On the one hand, it's the biggest

shopping event of the year. On the other hand, it's dominated by big

retailers with deep pockets, aggressive discounts and marketing

budgets that you just simply aren't going to be able to match. So

that's exactly what we're going to delve into. So Black

Friday, let's put it all into context in

2025, that is coming on the 28th of

November. But as anyone who has been

in the retail industry for a while will know, and in fact, anyone who does

any shopping will know it's no longer one day. It is

something that has crept forward bit by bit

to the point where some of the big giants like Amazon, they start in,

in late October and people talk about Black

Friday month and all of this kind of thing. So

it's gone from being a single day to really

expanding to be a full month. And Black Friday,

it's a U.S. holiday. It started in the U.S.

it is the day after Thanksgiving. So a lot

of Thanksgiving is the final Thursday of the month of

November. And typically businesses would close

or some businesses would give their employees the Friday off as well

so that they could travel and see family. And therefore it

was a day that a lot of people had time off. And also the other

thing that happens in the US with Thanksgiving being such a key

holiday, it tends to slightly push back the

onset of Christmas, or at least it used to. So for example,

in the uk, pretty much as soon as we've done with bonfire

night on the 5th of November, we're straight into Christmas. In the US

because Thanksgiving is coming at the end of the month, it tends to be

that it switches over people's mentality switches to their Christmas

shopping post Thanksgiving. So Thanksgiving is predominantly

a food related holiday, spending time with family. It's not something that you buy

presents for. So people would really start thinking about

their Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving. And that's where it started.

And there are lots of different theories as to why it's called Black Friday, but

one of them is that that is the day that the retailers went into the

black. They'd been running in a deficit for the entire year, but

once the Christmas shopping kicked in, they would

actually turn a profit. Hence the name Black Friday. And in the

us it also has different connotations. A lot of the

really big stores would be doing what they call door buster

deals, where if you're one of the first people in through the door, you get

these incredible discounts. And it's

generally seen as a big shopping day. And in the uk, it's come over

here completely detached from Thanksgiving because of course we don't celebrate

Thanksgiving in the U in the uk. And so we just have it

really as this discounting. And what it's actually meant to the retail industry

overall is that we, what it's done is effectively

pulled some of that Christmas spending out

of December and into November. So for many, many years in the

retail industry, we would always see December as the biggest year,

biggest month of the year, because that was where all the Christmas spending

happened. But what we, what I saw in the companies that I

worked for was with the advent of all of this discounting in

November, what was happening was it, it was actually not increasing

spend overall for that Christmas period, but it was effectively pulling it

forward a month. So for some people November is their biggest month.

Some people it's still December, but it has really

changed and shifted the way that people

spend their money during this Christmas time period. And I, the reason I'm,

I say all of this is because I think it's really important as small business

owners that you understand the kind of big picture of

Black Friday, what's actually happening during that time, and then make the decision

that is best for you because I do think

there are opportunities in Black Friday. In the small business world,

Black Friday can feel like a really, really loaded topic. Some people

absolutely will not even Entertain doing anything for it.

And sometimes I've even seen people talking out against

small businesses that take part. But I honestly think it's a

personal choice. I think that Black Friday as

it exists in terms of really super deep discounting, that's not really a game

for small businesses to play because they just don't generally have the mar. But

that said, we are talking about what's on your customer's mind

and your customer is going to be thinking about their Christmas purchasing

around Black Friday. So it makes sense for you as a business owner to be

thinking about what you can do that is right for you and for your business.

And that's really what I want to delve into in this episode is about you

thinking about what you want it to look like for your business and

the way that you can use it to make the to have

the the best situation for you as a business owner.

So should you participate in Black Friday?

Well, let's look at some pros and cons. The pros are, as I mentioned

before, this is the shopping event of the year. For many

businesses, this will be the point in which they take the most money.

So having some kind of offer can help boost your visibility

during the biggest shopping event of the year and help you acquire new

customers. Because ultimately that's the name of the game, acquiring new

customers and getting your loyal customers to come back more often. It

can also be a great opportunity on that note to reward and engage your loyal

customers. And it can actually be fun. There are lots of different

ways that you can make it creative and interesting as well

as as try and catch the wave. So sometimes I think about with

discounts, for example, if you are going

to try and make the most out of your discounts, then it can

work well to do them when are already buying because it's almost like you're

catching that wave. Like if you're surfing and you

the wave of people spending, can you catch that and then amplify the impact of

what you're doing? And so why, why should you not take part in

Black Friday? You may just fundamentally disagree with it and that's absolutely

fine. If it feels really wrong for you to do something for Black Friday for

your business, then you absolutely can opt out. There's

lots of other options as well. People like just a card

campaign often do their indie week alternative to Black Friday.

There is of course Small Business Saturday, which is an

absolutely fantastic opportunity to shout

about being a small business. And that happens on Saturday

29th November, for example. So shortly after Black Friday.

And that is something that can be a really good way for you to align.

Some people just don't want the additional stress. If your sales have been really, really

good, you may just not want to participate in Black Friday because you

know it's going to cause a peak of sales that you're just not really prepared

to staff up to that peak. It can cause some,

some risks in terms of planning your stock. How do you plan it?

Making sure that you've got enough stock to support it, for example,

and you may just not have the margin for it. You may not want to

have any kind of discount going on. And

ultimately, if you know that you can hit your sales targets

without doing anything specific for Black Friday and you don't want the

impact on your margins and you don't want the kind of stress of having a

big spike of sales, then by all means don't feel like you have to

participate. It's not all or nothing either. You can choose your

own version of Black Friday which aligns with your brand values and

your bottom line. You don't have to get caught up in the idea that it

all has to be about discounts. For example, you can have.

There are lots of different options which we're going to delve into. The other

thing that I would really encourage you to do when it comes to Black Friday

is we're going to talk a little bit more in the podcast about

what some different options are, how you can, how you can choose

different types of promotions. But the other thing that I'd really stress is

that Black Friday doesn't exist in a vacuum. One of the most effective

ways to plan your Black Friday and the reason that I'm releasing this podcast episode

now and not even closer to the time is that

really realistically you need to think about the entire 13

week time period in the run up to Christmas. So the

fourth quarter from the beginning of October all the way through to the end of

December. Look at that, look at that time period. Because what you

want to do is you want to really plan your Black Friday as

part of a broader Q4 strategy. And what I mean by that is

don't have small discounts and small offers and

all the way through and as well as big offer

on Black Friday. If you're going to do something big for Black Friday,

you may well want to really focus on your full price sales the rest of

the time. What you don't want to do is feel like you're offering

discounts or giveaways or.

Sorry, let me say that Again, what you don't want to do is feel like

you're offering lots of different promotions that

all get mixed up and then Black Friday doesn't really stand out. For example,

if you did want to do something discount related, you really want it to be

the main discount that you do in that fourth quarter to make it special,

to make it really have impact and to really

reduce the promotional fatigue that can happen when you just run

repeated discounts. So

how do you plan it out then? So as I said,

look at the entire fourth quarter, look at

that 13 week time period, work out what you're going to be talking about, various

different points. Anyway, if you are in the resilient

retail club or you work with me one to one, you'll know I'm a big

fan of something called the trading calendar, which really helps you map out what are

your product launches, what are your business events that are happening

anyway, what are all of the different things that you're doing in that fourth quarter

that you need to take into account so that you don't

end up with too many mixed messages. So work out what you've got

going on each week and then work out, okay, so what is the message that

you want for Black Friday? And one of the ways that you can look at

it is you can ask yourself, what am I actually trying to achieve in Black

Friday? And here are some different goals that you might have. You might

have the simple goal of sales and profit.

Okay? So that's absolutely fine. It's really, in that case just about driving as many

sales as you can without being brand damaging. In that case,

you would want to focus on a discount.

I am not a fan of blanket discounts, as I've said many, many times. In

other words, money off absolutely everything. But if you ever were going to do

one, then Black Friday can work really, really well. Especially if it's a tactic

that you don't use very often or rarely or ever.

Then it can work well to say, right, well, for one day,

two days, maybe the four, the full four day time period,

I'm going to offer money off everything. And that is it. That is what you're

going to do and that is what you're going to promote. And that works especially

well. As I said, that's another reason to look at the entire fourth quarter. Because

if you're always running these kinds of offers, then it's not going to have much

impact on Black Friday. All you're going to have to do is go deeper than

you normally do, which is a very Slippery slope.

So what you're going to want to do is if you are going to decide

that that's the thing you're going to aim for with that blanket discount you want

to really focus in on, okay, this is the

message for the whole fourth quarter. And I'm not going to do other things that

might dilute from it. You might also have an eye, a goal of

customer acquisition. So that could be another reason to do the blanket

money off people that you know are on your list who haven't bought.

For example, you might do an offer just for them. You just want people to

move from being people who are interested in your brand to people who buy.

And another option you might have is you might decide, well, actually what I really

want for Black Friday is I want to clear some unproductive stock.

And personally this is one of my favorite kinds of Black Friday promotions because you

can make them look quite enticing to your customer, but they can

also help really move you through some slow

moving stock. And the way that you would do that is you would identify what

was moving slowly and then you would put together a, a

promotion that is off selected lines. So it could be a,

you know, decent discount. It could be 25, 30% off your selected

lines if you're effectively using your discount to shape your

customer behavior to clear through some unproductive stock.

So those would be some different types of

goals for you to think about for your Black Friday promotion.

And there's lots of other things that you can do as well. So we talked

there about the discounts, but there's other things that you might want to do.

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book a call. So we talked there about

the discounts, but there's other things that you might want to do. Something you might

offer for Black Friday would be an exclusive bundle or an exclusive product.

In fact, exclusive products can work quite well. If you really want to push a

full price agenda at Black Friday and not go for discounting. One of the ways

you can get people to actually part with their money at a very discount driven

time of year is by offering them something new and exclusive that they can't get

at other times. So bundles are also great

options. So you could, for example, put together bundles of your products and

either you're just offering them at a slight discount or

slightly better price than you would get if you bought them all separately, or

you might offer some kind of other upgrade like free gift wrapping

or free box or basket or whatever it is that your

products are presented in. You can also offer other

things like loyalty rewards or enhanced loyalty rewards

if you have a loyalty scheme. I definitely would suggest that

whatever you do, whatever you choose to do as your promotion,

always think about giving your VIP earning early access or just

asking yourself for every single promotion that you do, what are you

offering your VIPs also known as your

either just all of your email subscribers or your very best email

subscribers. So make sure that you are

thinking about whatever it is that you're doing that you're using it also to help

drive sign up and engagement with your email list because they're getting either

additional acts, special perks or they're getting early

access or they're getting extensions on the discount. So for

example, they get an early Black Friday preview on a Thursday,

everybody else gets it on the Friday. Those those

types of tactics, they help give you that double whammy from the

promotion that you're not only hyping the promotion, but you're also

encouraging people to want to become a vip, want to

become part of your inner community, as it were.

With all of these, you can pick and choose. You may decide that your Black

Friday offer is going to be that you have a special

gift with purchase that is only going to be shipping out on Black Friday.

That might be what you choose to do and that might align really well with

your business, really focusing on your

business ethos, your values. And it works really well because you know that

your customers love special perks and special and limited edition

items. You might decide that Black Friday is going to be the one

time of the year you do a blanket discount and really go out all out

and push it. Those are two different ends of the spectrum. And as

I said, I really do believe that for small businesses it's up to you to

decide where you sit. But what I would suggest is that you decide it as

part of your fourth quarter overall plan and that you really

think about whatever it is that you're offering, that you make sure that you are

giving your VIPs and your email subscribers an additional

boost as well. So as I said, it could be that they get an

extra special gift or a different gift or an additional gift.

It could be that they get the gift for longer or get the opportunity

to get the gift for longer. But the main thing is that

you really choose something that aligns. But choose

it, set it, think about it. Now, don't leave it to the last minute.

Don't leave it to the point at which all of the marketing messages start firing

out and you start feeling really worried that you've somehow missed the boat.

And don't forget, you can build anticipation early. You can have

teasers. I would also suggest that if you listen to all of this and you

think, well, I actually think my stock is fine, I don't really,

I don't really see the point of doing anything additional for Black Friday if you're

not going to participate. I would recommend that you actually tell your customers

that the reason for that is that almost everybody sees

a wavering in sales in that week of Black Friday. Because Black Friday,

why would you buy something at full price as a customer?

Why would you buy something full price on a Tuesday if you know Black Friday

is coming on the Friday? And it may not be that you are going

to insist on there being a discount, but you just know

that if you wait another three or four days, you're going to find out if

there's a discount or some kind of perk. So if there isn't going to be

one, then it's absolutely fine to say that to your customers.

And it's absolutely fine to make that point. And you know, why not explain

why if there's a reason that you're not taking part? I think that can also

be an opportunity to really build customer

loyalty, brand loyalty. I think that it's a really great

opportunity for you to be really clear about what you stand for as

a business and also take a look for everyone who's doing Black

Friday in an alternative way. I think it's really nice to see. I

often cite Lucy and Yak as an example of people who do

a really great purpose led version of Black Friday

where effectively what they do is that they do charitable

donations based on the sales on Black Friday and they send

girls to school in India and they talk about the number of

pupils that they've been able to support so far and they keep updating it through

the weekend. So it's very engaging. It's something that the customers

can really get behind. I mean, it's absolutely nothing to do with

discounts. It's all to do with a charitable donation instead.

So there's lots of different things that you can do, you can tie it into

charity. In the US I've seen people do, because it's

the same week as Thanksgiving. They've done a whole

festival of being grateful and giving back to their

customers, for example. And that's something that I talked

about in the loyalty episode of the podcast with Charlie Casey a

couple of weeks ago. But there's lots and lots of different options.

The thing is, as I said, it can be creative, it can be fun. Have

a challenge yourself. Think of something fun and different that you could do. And

that could still be doing a discount, but in a fun and interesting

way. The only thing I will say as well is just make sure that your

offers are really, really simple. If you are offering a discount, then just

keep it really simple.

The one thing I really dislike on Black Friday is when I go onto

somebody's website and they have things like they say, well, spend this much

and get free shipping or get a free bracelet or

get money off this, that and the other. And you just feel a bit overwhelmed.

You want it to be really, really simple. Either you're offering money off or free

shipping or whatever it might be, but just don't try and stack too many different

offers. Because I just think that the more complicated an offer, the less

likely the customer is to engage with it. They don't like things that are complicated.

They just like it to be super simple. So

we know we've talked today about how Black Friday 2025, it's

going to be bigger than ever. The spending figures from

2024, they prove just how much money flows

through the world's e commerce websites and

shop tills in that particular weekend. And it can be tempting to

think when you get surrounded by all of this promotional Black Friday messaging, that it

has to be about discounts. But I really, truly, strongly believe that it doesn't

have to be about discounts. You can do anything from

nothing to charitable donations

to special products. You can offer bundles,

you can offer discounts, what we call bounce

back where you offer them money off in January if they buy with you.

In Black Friday, there's so many different things that you can do. It's well

worth taking the time now to really think about Black Friday. Think about

how it's going to fit into everything else

that you do in the business and come up with

something that you can feel really proud about, that you can shout about and that

can help you. You build loyalty and also

springboard you into 2026 with lots of fabulous

new customers. So if you've enjoyed today's

episode. Why not follow, subscribe or

like the podcast, depending on the platform that you're on? We're going to be having

lots more tips about selling at Christmas as we

go through the next few months, so stay tuned to the podcast. If you have

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you next week.