Jumia to surpass 2.3 million visits made in 2015 Black Friday sales

…announces 12 days of online discounts for 2016

Jumia, Nigeria’s online retail giant, says its e-commerce platform has put all the necessary things in place to make sure that it surpasses sales and the over 2.3 million visits to its website during last year’s Black Friday sales. Jumia has announced the date and categories for its 2016 Black Friday sales event, revealing that the massive sales to kick off Christmas shopping will take place for twelve days this year. From Monday November 14th to Friday, November 25th 2016 all Jumia websites including Jumia Mall, Jumia Food, Jumia Car, Jumia Market, Jumia Travel, Jumia House and Jumia Deals will have major price slashes across various items on the online platforms. Following the impressive volume of orders last year, this year’s sales event has been expanded to reach even more customers. “This year’s Jumia Black Friday is designed to offer our customers more days, more deals and more convenience and to deliver on better customer service to our shoppers,” said Simone Bartlett, Head of Marketing Jumia Nigeria.

According to Jumia, top brands like AXA Mansard, MTN, Binatone, Innjoo, Infinix, Poly Star, HP, Intel, Etihad airways have partnered with it to bring to Nigerians the largest shopping event of the year. The term “Black Friday” was coined in the 1960s to mark the kickoff to the Christmas shopping season. ‘Black’ refers to stores moving from the “red” to the ‘black’, back when accounting records were kept by hand and red ink indicated a loss, and black a profit. As retailers began to realise that they could draw big crowds by discounting prices, Black Friday became the days to shop, even better than those last minute Christmas sales. Nigerian retailers recently jumped on the bandwagon, especially as the e-commerce market began to grow expansively and this has given room for bargain hunters in Nigeria to get festive deals. “Customers should expect increased sales inventory in all categories including: fashion, electronics, phones, computers, home, baby, health and beauty – up to 70 percent off regular prices and over 100,000 deals from 2,500 vendors. They will also get special offerings from brands like PolyStar, HP, Binatone, Nikon, Pampers and Apple,” Jumia said in a statement made available to BusinessDay.