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Cape Town - "You don’t have that chaos," says Grant Brown, the managing director of online fashion retailer Zando, a day ahead of the annual Black Friday sale.
Brown is talking about the benefits of online shopping as opposed to queuing at the break of dawn outside a brick and mortar store.
"And I think in particular if you saw last year, in terms of the chaos that was happening at some of the in-stores with all the shoppers and that, which I think, is the beauty of online retail," says Brown.
"You don’t have that chaos and you can basically do this from the comfort of your home - on your phone, on your laptop, at any point in time. So I would really advise people to shop online, as opposed to go scrumming in store to find the best deal."
Zando is gearing up to offer up to 80% off on deals on Friday, which has become one of the busiest shopping days of the year.
Brown advises online shoppers to prepare for the day by drawing up a shopping list.
"Put everything on your wish list, so that the next day [Black Friday], early in the morning when you get into the office, you can check out fairly quickly with those items. That would probably be my best tip. Try and browse beforehand and then decide what you want," he says.
Like other retailers, Brown says Black Friday has grown in leaps and bounds in SA in recent years.
"We’ve seen a huge amount of growth over the last three years. And if I look at Zando in particular, it caught us a little bit unawares about three years ago, in terms of the real growth and interest on this.
"Subsequently we have managed to get better deals for our customers, improve our operations around that. And I think this year we are really well prepared around that," he adds.
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