Jumia Begins Black Friday Sales

Emma Okonji

Jumia Nigeria, an online shopping platform, will this Friday commence its sixth ‘Black Friday’ sales across Nigeria with 90 per cent discount on over four million targeted products.

Designed to promote the convenience of online shopping and to grow small and medium businesses across the country, the firm explained that this year’s ‘Black Friday’ sales would be five times bigger than last year’s, where it had over 120 per cent in sales and over 200 per cent increase in the volume of traffic for online shoppers.

Speaking about the preparation for this year’s sales, the Chief Executive Officer of Jumia Nigeria, Mrs. Juliet Anammah said the campaign would run from midnight at 12.01am on Friday, November 2nd through November 30th, 2018.

The Black Friday sales will run only on every Friday of the week throughout the month of November.

Anammah, also stated that special deals such as flash sales, treasure hunts and special vouchers would be exclusively available to customers who shop on the Jumia App.

“We expect to see an increase of 50 per cent website traffic as a build up over last year’s Black Friday. The rise of mobile penetration in the country which stands at 84 per cent, is one of the factors driving our App and website visits; others being our amazing deals.

“Last year, 79 per cent of our customers shopped on mobile phones via website and App, and we are looking to upturn the numbers to 100 per cent at the end of 2018, in order to achieve the country’s goal of becoming a mobile-first country,” she added.

Speaking about efforts Jumia had put in place to provide customers with quality products, the Chief Commercial Officer of Jumia Nigeria, Shobhit Pandey said: “We have doubled our product assortment compared to 2017 Black Friday campaign. This year, with the support of our vendors, we are offering our customers discounts as high as 80 per cent on categories such as men’s and women’s fashion, 70 per cent on wristwatches and sunglasses, 65 per cent on health and beauty products, 50 per cent on mobile phones, electronics, and groceries, and 40 per cent on fitness and automobile products. “Unlike last year, these amazing deals will only be available every Friday of the week in the month of November.”

He further thanked Jumia’s partners, such as Binatone, HP, Samsung, and Haier for offering the best rates during the campaign.

Managing Director, Binatone Nigeria, Prasun Banerjee, who spoke about why the partnership with Jumia for Black Friday would help deepen e-Commerce penetration in the country, said: “Jumia has made the Black Friday sales event a wonderful opportunity for us to offer huge discounts to their customers, thereby enabling us to sell more items than we projected. This means that more Nigerians will shop during this period.”