Black Friday for a small shop, without wrecking your prices

A small shop does not win Black Friday on price. It cannot — the discount that gets noticed next to a retailer's fifty per cent leaves a maker working for nothing. What a small shop can do is be worth buying from in the one week everybody is already shopping.

Should you discount at all

Work out the margin on your three best sellers first. If a twenty per cent discount takes you below what an hour of your time is worth, the answer is no, and no is a respectable answer — plenty of shops post "no sale here, my prices are the same all year" and sell well on exactly that.

The real cost of a deep discount is not the week; it is the month after, when the people who would have paid full price in December have already bought at thirty per cent off.

What to offer instead

• A bundle: two things together at a price that still beats your single-item margin.
• Free upgrade — personalisation, express delivery, gift wrap. Costs you little, reads as generous.
• Early access for your existing customers, a day before everyone else. Costs nothing at all.
• A gift with purchase over a threshold, which lifts basket size instead of cutting price.
• A digital add-on that costs you nothing per sale, if you sell physical things.

If you do discount

1. 1Pick one number and apply it to a defined group of products. A different discount per item is a support ticket generator.
2. 2Ten to twenty per cent is the normal range for handmade and digital. Below ten reads as nothing; above thirty starts teaching people to wait.
3. 3Set the dates and stop on the day you said. A sale that keeps getting extended is a price cut, not a sale.
4. 4Never raise prices beforehand to fake a bigger discount — in most countries that is illegal, and buyers screenshot.

Four things ready before the week

• Stock or file capacity to handle a spike without missing anything.
• The email or post announcing it, written in advance, not on the morning.
• Every delivery date and cut-off stated where a buyer will look.
• A note of last year's numbers, so you can tell afterwards whether it was worth doing.

Then measure the week properly: revenue is not the number that matters, margin after fees is. A record week that made less money than an ordinary one is worth knowing about before you plan next year.