Boots has hailed its Black Friday performance, insisting that its Boots.com website achieved record-breaking sales to date, with over three orders being placed every second.
Overall Black Friday sales were up 18% online and 17% in-store compared with last year. Boots.com warehouse also dispatched more products on Black Friday than any other day this year.
According to Boots’ own data, the busiest order hour was during the England vs USA World Cup match at 8pm-9pm on Friday.
With over 18,000 deals on offer, customers were offered discounts on major brands including MAC, Dyson, No7, Benefit and Fitbit.
In the run-up to Black Friday, Boots also invested in its supply chain to bring faster and more efficient deliveries.
As a result, the company commissioned a claimed “UK-first” with automation at its main warehouse to enable an extra 70,000 lines a day to be picked, the equivalent of 20,000 more orders per day.
The retailer has also used its team of ‘cobots’ – collaborative robots – to support picking operations, with each cobot predicted to have travelled over 37 miles a day during the Black Friday peak, versus a usual 28 miles.
In addition, Boots has introduced more hybrid stores which pick and pack online orders. There are now 90 of these stores across the UK, that operate as normal Boots stores, but also support the warehouse with boots.com and click and collect orders.
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