Newegg Brings Black Friday Deals to China, But Will It Catch On?

‘Black Friday,’ the day of discount-led shopping frenzy that originated in the US, is not a tradition in China. Nonetheless, Newegg, the American e-commerce site, is running a Black Friday promotion today on its Chinese site, newegg.com.cn.

It’s an unusual move since none of its competitors in the country – such as 360Buy, or Dangdang (NYSE:DANG), which sell the same mix of mostly consumer electronics and some random stuff – are doing the same. But consumers love bargains, so it should be popular regardless of the timing. The Black Friday selection on Newegg China is a bit limited, but offers discounts of 10 to 60 percent on those items. Most of the really enticing goods, such as high-end laptop and smartphones, however, are limited to 10 to 30 percent being knocked off of their pricetags.

Perhaps the most enticing promo sale is on the Samsung Galaxy SII, which is slashed to 3,600 RMB (US$565) in an unlocked state. The oddest bargain, meanwhile, is an ageing LG feature phone that’s selling today for 9 RMB – yes, that’s $1.50. Check out that LG one here.

In recent years in China, the so-called Singles Day – on 11/11 – has emerged as a festival of fevered shopping. It reached new heights this month when the B2C online shopping market leader, Tmall.com, sold 439 million RMB worth of goods in just the first hour. After a full 24 hours of discounts, netizens had snapped up an astounding 3.36 billion RMB ($530 million) worth of stuff. I get the feeling that Singles Day, rather than Black Friday, is going to catch on in China. Either way, it’s a day of bargains for consumers to pick through.

The last time we looked at market share in the B2C e-commerce sector in China we found that Newegg was in eighth place, with a 1.1 percent-sized slice of the pie. That’s less than half of its compatriot Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), which recently refocused on China with new branding. In this interactive graph, Newegg.com.cn is highlighted in red: