Amazon makes Black Friday the 1st Monday in October

Company launches ‘Black Friday-worthy’ deals in hopes of getting consumers clicking now

A bottom-line clunker of a quarter (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

Amazon.com Inc. has moved its Black Friday shopping day up by seven weeks, a sign the mega-retailer wants holiday orders in the pipeline as soon as possible to avoid delivery snafus caused by persistent supply chain bottlenecks.

In an announcement Monday, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) said it was making “Black Friday-worthy” deals available “earlier than ever” across every product category. Black Friday, which historically falls on the day after Thanksgiving, is scheduled this year for Nov. 26. 

Amazon has pulled forward its peak season cycles before. However, it has never advertised Black Friday sales as early as the first Monday in October.

The retailer is in the process of hiring 125,000 full- and part-time U.S. fulfillment and logistics employees for what could be a record-breaking peak season. Unlike its delivery competitors, Amazon avoided associating the job openings with the seasonal cycle.

Amazon said it now offers same-day deliveries in 12 U.S. metro areas for members of its Prime service.

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Mark Solomon

Formerly the Executive Editor at DC Velocity, Mark Solomon joined FreightWaves as Managing Editor of Freight Markets. Solomon began his journalistic career in 1982 at Traffic World magazine, ran his own public relations firm (Media Based Solutions) from 1994 to 2008, and has been at DC Velocity since then. Over the course of his career, Solomon has covered nearly the whole gamut of the transportation and logistics industry, including trucking, railroads, maritime, 3PLs, and regulatory issues. Solomon witnessed and narrated the rise of Amazon and XPO Logistics and the shift of the U.S. Postal Service from a mail-focused service to parcel, as well as the exponential, e-commerce-driven growth of warehouse square footage and omnichannel fulfillment.