Extended Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales made November the biggest month in Australian online shopping history, surpassing last year's record month, with Australia Post delivering more than 21 million parcels across the longer sales event period.
Online shopping in November beat last year's record by more than 13 per cent, and underlining the boom in online shopping that COVID has generated, was up an incredible 76 per cent on November 2019. On average Australia Post delivered more than 2.3 million parcels every weekday across this longer sales period*, with around 800,000 delivered over the Black Friday weekend itself.
Bargains were being snapped up well ahead of the traditional four-day shopping sales period, with many sales kicking off earlier and lasting longer, as shoppers ticked off Christmas gift lists and stocked up on clothing, shoes, accessories, pet products and things for the home and garden.
Almost one in four purchases was from a Fashion & Apparel specialty retailer, while Pet Products and Tools & Garden (both up more than 21 per cent year on year), Footwear (up 17.8 per cent YOY), and Fashion Accessories (up 12.4 per cent YOY) were all in hot demand.
NSW topped the table with more than 36 per cent of all purchases during the sales, and also grew the fastest, up 17 per cent year on year.
Australia Post General Manager, Parcel & Express Services Ben Franzi said extended pre-Black Friday sales had completely transformed this year's event, and Australians once again had taken advantage of the sales.
"With many cyber sales starting sooner than last year people have been able to snap up online deals for longer than just those traditional four big days from Black Friday," Mr Franzi said.
"We're working hard in what's still a challenging environment, with our delivery teams managing to get almost a million parcels a day to front doors across NSW alone on December 1 and December 2, and we've got our delivery people and processing around the country working around the clock, as we head into a busy Christmas."
Australia Post moved 15 per cent more air freight across the Cyber Weekend than last year, with 444 tonnes of parcels transported via 21 dedicated planes on the busiest day, Cyber Monday, which was also the biggest day for parcels entering the network with more than 2.8 million lodged.
The Australia Post mobile app is the best way for customers to get updates about when purchases are due and to choose the best place to collect parcels, including at any of the free 24/7 Parcel Lockers at more than 1000 locations around Australia.
WHAT PEOPLE BOUGHT
Top 5 categories by growth, YOY
• Pet Products - 21.8%
• Tools and Garden - 21.1%
• Footwear - 17.8%
• Fashion Accessories - 12.4%
• Beauty - 10.9%
