Black Friday statistics

The largest shopping day of the year has come and gone—and our members scooped up some serious Black Friday bargains by using their personalized editions of Salemail to find out who had the merch they wanted on sale in their sizes.

Since we’re all about digging into the data, Shop It To Me analyzed sales on more than 45,000 clothing and accessories items from 75+ online retailers.  If you’re as curious as we were to find out where the best deals were to be had, read on for the Black Friday redux. Stay tuned tomorrow when we recap Cyber Monday!

Overall, discounts were just slightly lower on Black Friday this year compared to last (45% off this year vs. 47% off last year).

  • Women’s items were average 46%-off this year vs. 48%-off last year
  • Men’s items: 39%-off this year vs. 44% last year

By Department:

Women’s discounts were 7% steeper than for Men’s (46%-off for women, 39%-off for men).  This pattern held true for the second year in a row (last year showed +4% greater discounts for women than men).

Categories:

This year (2010), the largest discounts on women’s items were found on Casual pants (50%-off), Casual shirts (49%-off), Dresses (50%-off), Shorts (51%-off), and Skirts (52%-off).  Smaller discounts were found on items more typically associated with gifting: Bags (39%-off), Accessories (39%-off), Jewelry (37%-off), Intimates (40%-off), and Shoes (41%-off).

Women’s Discounts By Channel:

  • If you’re looking for a serious bargain, online-only stores are where to look (i.e., Endless.com, Shopbop.com, Piperlime.com, etc).  For the second year in a row, Online-only stores offered the steepest discounts of all channels.  But last year, the deals were even better (average 48%-off this year, but 51%-off last year).
  • Department store discounts were slightly steeper this year (43%-off) than last (40%-off).
  • Specialty stores (i.e., gap.comjcrew.comstevemadden.com, etc) marked products down slightly less than last year (44%-off this year vs. 46%-off last year).

Pricing:

Overall, the prices retailers charged on women’s items were lower this year than last (both original and sale prices):

  • Average Original price charged this year: $220 vs. $247 last year
  • Average Sale price charged this year: $119 vs. $129 last year

An exception to this was Department stores.  Department stores charged higher Original and Sale prices this year compared to last year, and also compared to other channels:

Original prices charged this year vs. last year:

  • Department stores: $290 vs. $213
  • Online-only: $260 vs. $324
  • Specialty retailers: $118 vs. $114

Sale prices charged this year vs. last year:

  • Dept: $166 vs. $129
  • Online-only: $136 vs. $159
  • Specialty retailers: $65 vs. $62

Although their discounts were slightly better this year, it appears that department stores are working hard to maintain their premium positioning by keeping their original and sale prices higher than other channels, and higher than last year.

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Analysis was based on:

45,701 women’s items TY (2010) vs. 23,844 womens items LY (2009)

11,646 men’s items TY (2010) vs. 5,974 items LY (2009)

75 total retailers (9 dept stores, 25 Online only, 41 Specialty stores)

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Here are the most popularly clicked items from Salemail this past week:

**Black Friday Sales
**

Free People Jolene’s Jacket: Reg $178, Now $124.99

Ella Moss Boardwalk Plaid Dress: Reg $182, Now $90.99

Tory Burch Reva Ballet Flats: Reg $235, Now $163.99

The North Face ‘Logo’ Pants: Reg $40, Now $29.90

Alice + Olivia Kendra Sequin Dress: Reg $396, Now $277.20

Free People Super Skinny Five Pocket Jeans: Reg $68, Now $47.99