By James Davey
LONDON, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Black Friday promotions look setto become a permanent - and bigger - fixture of Britain's retailcalendar after store groups embraced the American tradition forthe first time, with its impact taking even seasoned retailersby surprise.
U.S. discount day Black Friday is the Friday followingThanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday of November, and is sonamed because it traditionally indicates the point at whichAmerican retailers begin to turn a profit, or go "into theblack".
Last year marked the first time UK store groups such asAsda, Dixons Retail and John Lewis participated in a really serious way and trading updatespublished in January showed it had a major influence on theshape of Christmas sales.
"The genie's now out of the bottle. It's here to stay," saidNeil Saunders, retail analyst at Conlumino.
"Retailers see that it drives some success, they willinevitably want to continue that into next year."
Britain is not alone in seeing new Black Friday activity. InSpain, for example, department store El Corte Ingles used theterm "Black Friday", in English, to advertise price cuts of upto 50 percent on products including electronics and clothes.
Last week Dixons, Europe's No. 2 electricals retailer bysales, reported a 5 percent increase in sales at UK and Irelandstores open over a year in the nine weeks to Jan. 4,highlighting a kick-start to Christmas sales from promotionsover the Black Friday weekend.
"In the UK we now celebrate Thanksgiving it seems," saidChief Executive Seb James, noting that Black Friday itself wasthe firm's fourth biggest trading day of the year.
"We're certainly planning that next year's Black Friday willbe big again," he said.
FIGHTING
John Lewis, Britain's largest department store retailer,also experienced a new pattern to festive trade.
"This Christmas has seen trade take a different shape toprevious years, with an early peak driven by Black Friday and ahuge surge in the final 10 days," said Managing Director AndyStreet.
Black Friday was John Lewis' biggest ever day for onlineorders.
For the first time Asda mirrored the Black Friday flash salethat has been held by its U.S. parent Wal-Mart, theworld's biggest retailer, for the past decade, offering a totalof half a million products at special prices.
While customer demand was high, with an over 400 percenttechnology sales uplift when compared with the previous week'ssales, Asda's event was marred by fights breaking out amongshoppers chasing limited stock in some crowded stores.
Whether embracing Black Friday actually makes commercialsense for retailers is open to debate.
Analysts reckon it can pull forward sales that store groupswould otherwise have made at full price, can blunt sales insubsequent weeks and also leaves consumers expecting morepre-Christmas promotions.
Asda argues it can protect profit margins by leveraging thehuge global purchasing power of its parent, with many of theproducts it sold on Black Friday - such as a Cyclone Explorer 7inch tablet for 49 pounds - specially sourced for the event.
Dixons says it can similarly maintain margins by placingespecially large orders with suppliers. "Discounting is a bit ofa misrepresentation in our market," said CEO James. "We'll getour suppliers to run their factory making one model to make theproduct cheaper so we can sell it cheaper."
