Black Friday @ SG: The sale that never was

The Black Friday / Cyber Monday dates had well expired. Naturally, being gear geeks, we were exposed to bargain deals in our social media feeds. We see steep discounts being offered by stores in line with our year-end bonuses. Of course, those mouth-watering deals were happening beyond these shores much to our dismay.

There were local deals to consider but these were hardly deals. Stores offered sanctioned discounts, selective discounts & indifferent discounts. First & foremost, the local establishments here had no obligations to match deals offered elsewhere. Most of the sale items were import items & the list prices worked out differently for them here so giving them BF / CM deals made no sense. Secondly, manufacturers are offering direct discounts if customers buy from them instead of dealers. These proved to be a serious proposal for some of us who won't hesitate to engage forwarding services after factoring in shipping charges. Since forwarding companies charge according to weight, some of us are more than willing to rope in friends as co-buyers just to split the shipping costs. Wise move. Thirdly, the distributors here are simply unenthusiastic when it comes to such events. The annual great Singapore Sale is effectively dead so why should BF / CM deals be any different? Distributors know nobody would throng their premises come BF / CM so they played along to ride on the hype instead of making genuine efforts to attract buyers.

Gear-wise, if you are living here, BF / CM deals should not be occasions to look forward to acquiring good bargains. Bitter truth - dealers are bogged down by high store rentals (getting higher as we speak) & would do well to perpetuate their existence as opposed to appeasing the buyers. The irony is, if you don't appease the buyers, you can say goodbye to existence. 

Taxes are going up in less than a month. Prices will go up & gear acquisition will be listed further down the consumer priority list. I just feel that this year end is a good opportunity to observe a robust buy-sell before nobody is eager to buy & selling proves to be a headache, come the new year but it is becoming a clear loss to both buyers & sellers. A sorely missed opportunity.