Paris decides to delay the Friday of torn offers to allow stores to reopen and avoid crowds
Black Friday (Getty Images) France wants to move Black Friday by a week. To allow for a gradual reopening of commercial activities with the measures planned to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, the French Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maire, proposed to postpone Black Friday across the Alps from November 27 to December 4. In this way, the government also thinks it can anticipate the reopening of the shops, scheduled for December 1st, right to November 27th, avoiding possible gatherings and leaving the traders time to prepare for the discounts.Dal for their part, the trade associations and large-scale retailers have accepted the proposal, asking for the guarantee that even the companies that sell online, Amazon above all, accept the same conditions, to avoid unfair competition from the web. And on the evening of November 19, Amazon France CEO Frédéric Duval confirmed that the ecommerce giant is also willing to postpone its promotions for a week, as stated in Le Monde.
With the new adhesion to the postponement, in the next few hours Paris is therefore preparing to sign the agreement also with the representatives of large distribution and retailers, who have declared themselves in favor provided that this serves above all to allow a reopening of the shops in the as short as possible.
Overall, Black Friday shopping generates a turnover of around 6 billion euros in France, of which one billion from online purchases and the rest in physical stores and shopping centers. With the postponement, therefore, even the stores could take advantage of the Black Friday opportunity to recover the drop in sales suffered during the closing period.
Amazon's decision may also seem an attempt to calm the tense climate that was created in the time between the platform and France, which in the past have measured hard on the issue of web tax for example. Only a month ago, Paris signed a document presented to the European Commission to ask for an end to the practices of unfair competition towards small traders put in place by the giants of the web during the months of lockdown.
In addition, some small businesses, politicians and associations have launched a # NoëlSansAmazon petition online, which has reached over 30,000 signatures, to support purchases in physical stores and "boycott" online spending in view of Christmas. A similar campaign has also started in Italy.