Black Friday has come and gone.
In fact, the first wave of traditionally major holiday shopping days are history already.
Early reports indicate that Black Friday wasn’t like it’s been in the past.
It’s still a big shopping day but a lot more shoppers are spending more time and money on Black Friday online.
One of the first ecommerce sites to report data from Black Friday is eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY). The online retail giant is reporting brisk Black Friday 2016 results.
eBay Black Friday 2016 Results
Here’s a look at what sold and how often they sold on eBay on Black Friday:
- A watch — the regular analog or digital kind — sold once every 3 seconds on eBay on Black Friday.
- Nearly as often as someone bought a watch, someone was buying a Pokemon-related item. Something from the Pokemon realm sold every four seconds on eBay
- LEGO toys were sold once every six seconds. And shoppers bought a laptop every nine seconds on eBay for the first big shopping day of the holiday season.
Those are all the relatively traditional gift items that were flying from seller accounts all day on Black Friday.
Newer items took a little longer to sell but still moved with some urgency that day:
- An Apple Watch transaction went down every 13 seconds on Black Friday on eBay. A Fitbit sold every 15 seconds. Drones sold every 18 seconds.
- A very generous gift giver or savvy shopper bought an iPhone 7 ever 30 seconds. That was as often as this year’s biggest fad gift, the Hatchimal, was sold.
This initial data from Black Friday suggests that even as holiday shopping moves to the internet, small businesses can still play an out-sized role.
In fact, based on these early numbers, they could play a bigger part in Black Friday sales than ever before.
After all, small businesses could easily sell any or all of the items listed on eBay’s early popular sales report — whether on eBay or on any one of a number of other popular sites where small merchants now list their wares.
It’s important for small businesses and eBay entrepreneurs to stay on top of trends and information like this to determine what to sell to attract that next holiday buyer.
Watches Photo via Shutterstock
Not surprised at all that Lego sells that well. Definitely surprised that watches are still selling that well. I haven’t worn one in years.
Joshua Sophy
A lot of these items, Robert, have a collector’s market. I included a photo of the Casio G Shock in this post because that’s got to be one of the bigger sellers. Huge collector market and big demand, especially among the younger set (or people like me who want to stay young via wristwatch).
Aira Bongco
I think that if something is reasonably priced and it can be a decent gift item, then it can really sell during this season.