Record Black Friday sees CPW sell phone contract every 3 seconds

Pay monthly contract sales up 70 per cent, while SIM-free sales grew 182 per cent YOY in “best-ever day of trading” for retailer

Carphone Warehouse says it broke “all company records” on Black Friday when it sold a new mobile phone contract every three seconds.

Sales of pay monthly contracts were up 70 per cent year-on-year, driven by high sales of Samsung and Apple devices on its busiest trading day ever.

Sales of SIM-free handsets were up by 182 per cent on Black Friday 2014, due to high sales of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, the retailer added.

The launch of its week-long “Black Tag” discount event on November 23 also broke all company records for the number of contracts sold within a week, although it refused to disclose exact numbers.

In a statement released on Friday, Carphone Warehouse MD Jeremy Fennell said: “We know our customers are always looking for great value and we are thrilled with the feedback and sales so far. Our website has been particularly busy with more than 2.2million site visits since we opened our ‘Black Tag’ event on Monday.

“We’re expecting this to continue over the weekend and into next week as we offer deals through to Wednesday. Reflecting how people actually want to shop, we are delighted that our decision to spread savings across ten days instead of focusing on just the one day of discounts has gone down so well with our customers.”

Online

More than 100,000 customers visited the retailer’s website between midnight and 5am on Black Friday, with five times as many people shopping online that on a normal Friday morning.

The retailer also revealed increased traffic to its website www.carphonewarehouse.com with online visits are up 43 per cent week on week and 78 per cent on Black Friday last year.

Carphone Warehouse said its top-selling deals was the Samsung Galaxy S6 (32 GB) available on Vodafone for free at £22 per month – a £200 saving on the upfront cost of the phone. Also selling well was iPhone 6s (16GB) available on EE for £50 at £32.49 per month – saving £100 on the upfront cost of the phone.