Some of the offers are available today only (25 November) while other companies are extending their offers across the weekend.
Among those getting involved this year are business-to-consumer (B2C) printers including Photobox, which is offering savings of up to 70% across the store for the whole of today, Printed.com, which is offering 20% off everything until midnight, and Truprint, which is offering site-wide savings of 50% until Monday.
Some trade printers are also getting in on the action. Solopress is running a wide range of deals until the end of the weekend while Precision Printing’s trade print service Where The Trade Buys is offering up to 50% off across its product range until Sunday, with 30% off Christmas products.
Precision chief executive Gary Peeling said: “We’ve done Black Friday before and I think it’s an interesting opportunity for two reasons. It allows us to give something to our regular customers, where they’re able to make a bit of additional margin on some key products for a short period of time, which is effectively a little thank you.
“From a marketing business perspective, for us it is also an opportunity to highlight the new products we have that customers may not have seen as yet, for example we’ve got a new ganged offset leaflet offering. Another example of that would be laser cut greetings cards and invitations.”
He added: “It’s slightly different in our environment than it would be for high-end electricals where people can wait and purchase ad hoc. Part of the challenge for us is that our customers need to have an order – you don’t necessarily have an order for laser cut Christmas cards. It’s not as dramatic as it would perhaps be in some other sectors but it’s useful.”
Commercial printer DPS is offering Black Friday savings until Sunday on personalised beer, prosecco and champagne through its sister company Intervino, which sells personalised printed gifts through retailers including Notonthehighstreet.com.
DPS managing director Matt Savage said: “We do the printing for Intervino so we’ve done Black Friday to promote that. It tends to become the norm that people expect you to do something so it’s an opportunity to see how it goes and if it’s worthwhile doing in the future.
“We considered doing it with printed products but weren’t quite sure if people would buy an NCR order pad off the cuff because it had a 30% discount so we thought we’d try it with some of the gifting that people are more likely to impulse buy.”
Black Friday originated in the US as part of the country’s post-Thanksgiving festivities and is regarded there as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season.
Since its arrival on UK shores six years ago, after an Amazon Black Friday event proved successful, it has become the biggest shopping day of the year and sees many major retailers cut stock prices in an aim to drive footfall and sales in the run-up to Christmas.
Dom Joseph, chief executive and co-founder of insights-driven advertising technology company Captify, said: “Today will undoubtedly surpass the record £1.1bn spent last year by bargain-hungry customers.
“Consumers will always vote with their wallets and, if Black Friday didn’t offer huge price discounts on products that consumers valued and wanted, it wouldn’t be nearly as successful as it is and will continue to be.”
