PCR Tech and IT retail, distribution and vendor news
UK tech etailer Ebuyer.com broke sales records during Black Friday this year, with almost one order taken every second.
MD Stuart Carlisle told PCR that the company handles around 600 orders per hour on average, but can handle up to 1,200, with a minimum of 11,000 orders per day in the run up to Christmas.
However, due to the increased demand on Black Friday 2014 (November 28th), Ebuyer.com handled an extra 3,000 orders on Sunday November 30th, with Carlisle stepping in to help warehouse staff by picking orders himself.
"This year Black Friday was a record day for the company in its 14 years of trading," he said. "We took an order near enough every second on Black Friday, which was absolutely crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was amazing – chaos in a nice way.
"What was more exciting was that this wasn’t demand for one item or a deal of the day, but our customers were buying lots of everything.
"I get up at 5 o’clock in the morning, do some reports and so on, and there were 1,200 people on the website at 5am on Black Friday. By the time I got into work at 7am, there were 2,800 people on the website. It was crazy."
Carlisle did say Cyber Monday (December 1st) "wasn’t as good" as Black Friday, but expects it to be bigger in 2015.
Ebuyer.com recently invested more than £1 million on its website infrastructure to cope with the increased demand.
"We’ve invested a lot of cash on infrastructure and it’s definitely paid off. We’re prepared for the next three to five years and we’ve got a lot more to come as well," Carlisle added.
"We had a problem years ago where we held a £1 sale before my time here – which probably wasn’t the right thing to do – and we had to sort the systems out to deal with those levels of customers.
"I’m really proud of the guys – it was something we’d geared up for this year and we knew we were on for a good Christmas."
Black Friday saw incredible demand this year, with several tech etail sites crashing, customers fighting over TVs in Tesco and John Lewis selling one tablet per second. Delivery firm Yodel is still struggling to deliver orders made during Black Friday.
Read the upcoming January 2015 issue of PCR for a special behind-the-scenes look at Ebuyer.com
