- Black Friday is an annual sale that is popular in the UK, Japan, the US, and around the world.
- This year, Black Friday will be on 23 November, alongside Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday sales.
For those of us with less self-restraint, the 11.11 sales represented an exciting time—albeit one that was littered with frozen screens and server lags.
On the global scene, Alibaba’s revenue reached the $10 billion mark within 2 hours, while recording a total of $30.8 billion over the course of “Single’s Day”.
Many shoppers, including myself, had to resort to button-mashing the refresh button in order to get transactions over the line. Some users even gave up on their purchases entirely.
So with the “biggest sale of the year” on this side of the world done and dusted for 2018, what about those of us who didn’t get their shopping over the line or didn’t have the time to utilise the sale? (read: last-minute Christmas shoppers)
Black Friday Sales: A Bright Time Of The Year
First, a bit of a background here. Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving, and is noted for being the start of the traditional year-end/Christmas shopping period.
Its dark name was originally given by the Philadelphia Police Department due to the number of traffic accidents that occurred as a result of the sheer number of shoppers out and about town.
Fast-forward until today and Black Friday, Thanksgiving, and Cyber Monday sales are now held every year. And in line with the swelling of e-commerce platforms, this has translated to a huge online presence as well.
But how do Malaysians take advantage of a sale that’s happening in places all around the world? Well, it’s simple if you think about it. International shipping charges are usually too expensive to make financial sense, so let’s talk about an option that we reviewed awhile back.
Simple, Buy And Ship
As its name suggests, Buyandship is a freight-forwarding service that goes about things in a slightly different way.
The way things work, they have warehouses in several countries (including the UK, US, and Japan—countries that do partake in Black Friday sales) which you can use as collection points for your shopping before it’s all shipped to the Buyandship HQ distribution centre at Hong Kong.
Shipping charges are reasonably affordable as the charges are based off the actual weight of the items instead of the conventional shipping method of using volumetric weight.
Dictionary Time: Dimensional weight, also known as volumetric weight, is a pricing technique for commercial freight transport (including courier and postal services), which uses an estimated weight that is calculated from the length, width, and height of a package.
They also offer the option to consolidate your shipping from different countries into one single shipment from their Hong Kong warehouse to Malaysia.
So if you’re a globetrotting online shopper from multiple countries, consolidate your orders into a single shipment. Chances are that you’ll save quite a bit of moolah instead of individually shipping each country’s orders to Malaysia.
What To Buy?
Usually, Black Friday deals are announced on the day itself, although there are a number of deals for pre-sales that are already available now.
However, the Buyandship website has a useful section that is dedicated to discounted deals. Do keep in mind that deals within this section are not Buyandship’s own deals.
Buyandship merely collates the best deals from notable brands/vendors and lists them for their users’ convenience.
For the upcoming Black Friday sales, the site now has a section solely comprised of deals exclusive to the sale. Keep in mind that these are products sold overseas, where retailers discount their items heavily for Black Friday, Thanksgiving, and Cyber Monday.
This Black Friday section also contains tutorials for first-timers, with detailed instructions on how to get your beloved shopping shipped to you through Buyandship.
Tips Of The Trade
When it comes to online shopping and big sales, the entire process requires a certain degree of finesse. Factors including timing and payment methods contribute heavily towards how satisfied you are at the end of your spree.
To help you prepare for one of the biggest sales of the year, here’s a quick breakdown of what you need to do:
i) Save the date
- Thanksgiving (November 22)
- Black Friday (November 23)
- Cyber Monday (November 26)
ii) Take the time difference into account
- Black Friday will begin at 0:00 PST Time, November 23.
- In Malaysian terms, the sales begin at 1PM, November 24.
- Do keep in mind that some online stores in the UK and Japan will start their Black Friday sales on November 23.
iii) Fill in your wishlist, shopping cart, and details beforehand
- Traffic on most shopping sites will be heavier than usual during major sales, so fill your wishlist/shopping cart up
- before the sales even begin, to ensure that you’re able to check your items out quickly.
iv) Payment options—the more, the merrier
- Prepare a variety of payment options, as some sites overseas may recognise foreign credit cards, while others might only accept PayPal.
v) Select a transshipment company
- Many foreign sites don’t offer international shipping to Malaysia, so it is important to figure out how you’re planning to get your shopping back to Malaysia first. I’d also advise you to do price-comparisons, as international shipping (when available) can be very costly.
vi) Setting your default address
- When checking out, make sure that the default address is the one selected by your transshipment company.
- If you’re using Buyandship, make sure you’ve entered in Buyandship’s warehouse as your default shipping address. For a more detailed explanation, click here.
- Here’s a list of Buyandship’s overseas warehouses.
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Black Friday is a sale that has gone largely unnoticed in Malaysia, while its popularity (or notoriety) continues to grow around the world. With the huge variety of online retailers to shop from, international shipping charges have been a major obstacle to some great deals.
The rise of transshipment options like Buyandship has started to provide us with a way to finally utilise the global e-commerce platform—so why limit yourself, when the world is your oyster?
- When registering at Buyandship, use our promo code, VP20, for an additional RM10 worth of credits. (Valid until 31 December 2018)
- You can read our first review of Buyandship here.
- You can find out more about Buyandship on their official website.
This article is written in collaboration with Buyandship.