Maximizing Sales During Saudi Arabia’s Shopping Festivals: A Retailer’s Guide
Saudi Arabia is home to some of the most vibrant and unique shopping festivals in the world. The eclectic mix of cultures, cuisines, and brands is only furthered by events like Riyadh Season, Jeddah Season, and Saudi National Day Sales, making the overall shopping experience truly one of a kind. If you’re a retailer in this region, you’re in luck. Once you understand this shopping frenzy and the enormous amount of sales it can generate, you’ll be shifting into overdrive, propelling your brand to unparalleled heights. However, it’s important to keep your business digitally savvy with apps like Ignite to capitalise on special commerce, secure transactions, and streamlined shipping and logistics. Read on to discover how you can fully utilise each popular shopping festival to your advantage and what strategies you can implement to build a stronger brand image and ultimately drive greater sales and revenue.
Opportunities: What Retailers Should Keep in Mind, Capillary
(source:https://www.capillarytech.com/blog/ecommerce-in-saudi-arabia-growth-trends-opportunities-2/)
8 Saudi Shopping Festivals You Can’t Miss: How Top Brands Nailed It!
People today love to shop. A large number of studies show how significantly consumer habits have grown over the years and predict even greater increases in the future. As a retailer, there is no better time to grow your business. With Saudi Arabia’s growing emphasis on entertainment, digital retail, and recreational events, there are now more shopping festivals than ever. Thus, it’s no surprise that top brands are employing innovation, tech, and a deep understanding of consumer habits to maximise sales. Here are the top shopping festivals you should keep an eye out for.
Riyadh Season
This is one of the most popular events in Saudi Arabia and attracts a great number of consumers each season. In fact, Riyadh Season features some of the greatest discounts from retailers and many typically wait for this specific event to announce new product launches and collaborations. Chanel, leading luxury beauty and fashion brand, is known to launch pop-up stores during Riyadh Season to capitalise on the massive influx of luxury shoppers. With Ignite Super App’s marketing service, you can run similar strategies by effectively managing marketing campaigns and leveraging its built-in-email marketing tool.
Jeddah Season
Jeddah Season seamlessly integrates culture with entertainment by hosting retail promotions, live musical performances and a variety of exhibitions. Held in the coastal city of Jeddah, this festival is a sight to behold. This is also the time when both local and international brands come together on an even playing field, both catering to thousands of customers and shoppers. In order to attract a younger audience, fashion brand Bershka organised a live music event during Jeddah Season, with a popular DJ playing the greatest hits of the decade. This alone brought customers from all over the region, amplifying not just target audiences but also introducing newer ones.
Total revenue of e-commerce from 2017-2025 in Saudi Arabia (Statista, 2021).
Saudi National Day Sales
Saudi National Day celebrates the unification of the Kingdom and falls on September 23 each year. It’s a national holiday, making it a popular time for shoppers to enjoy numerous sales and discounts, commemorating the historic day. Like all festive days, this too leads to a monumental increase in consumer spending. Brands scramble to market their lowest prices and specific bundle offers weeks in advance, So, if you’re a retailer, you might want to pay close attention to such marketing strategies.Use Ignite for targeted advertising options for specific audiences. Popular sports brand, Nike, for instance, waited until Saudi National Day to launch limited-edition sneakers in Saudi colours, becoming a viral hit overnight.
White Friday
Although this is popularly known as Black Friday in most parts of the world, countries in the Middle East tend to refer to it as White Friday. In Saudi Arabia, this day is associated with massive discounts and shopping frenzy, especially across e-commerce platforms. Shoppers find exclusive and unique deals on a wide range of products and services, making White Friday one of the busiest online shopping periods in the country. E-commerce giant Amazon Saudi Arabia typically offers the biggest discounts on its electronics and home goods on this day, resulting in enormous customer traffic and instant sell-outs. To make e-commerce easier for your brand, you can use services like Ignite’s Shop App service to provide your customers with features like seamless product browsing and efficient order tracking.
Eid Al-Fitr and Eid Al-Adha Sales
A major chunk of Saudi Arabia’s population celebrates Eid- which means an endless exchange of gifts, sweets, and special surprises. This makes these days not just culturally significant but also major shopping periods. A large number of beauty brands launch makeup sets exclusively for Eid festivities and many clothing retailers offer distinctive cultural outfits worn by many celebrating these occasions. This is also a time when gift bundles and family baskets are a big hit, so popular brands like L’oreal often curate gift sets specially for this occasion.
Hala February
Hala February is more typically associated with Kuwait but its regional influence means that it’s growing in popularity in Saudi Arabia too. This, too, is famous for its online and in-store sales, known also for entertainment events, live music shows, and product launches. Hala February is also a popular time for not just locals to travel but also tourists to fly in. Using this to its advantage, Ounass, a luxury e-commerce platform, ran Kuwait-specific deals during Hala February, offering free shipping and exclusive collections. If you want to take offers such as these a step further, leverage Ignite’s Online Storefront to cater to customers worldwide.
How to Crush it During Shopping Season: Retailers, Here’s All You Need to Do
1. Put a LOT of Energy in Promotions (And Advanced Planning)
Carefully planned promotions are your golden ticket to crushing it this season. You need to get working on your game plan months in advance to make sure all your bases are covered. Study your customer’s habits. Analyse what they like and dislike. Then base your promotions and bundle offers off of this information. Sounds simple? It is, if done correctly. Think of it like running a marathon. Every step will lead you closer to the finish line. But every step can also be unpredictable and chaotic. Hence, the pre-planning. When you’re thinking of promotional products, pick the right products to discount, craft punchy marketing messages, and make sure you have enough stock and delivery options in place. You can plan even better with Ignite Super App’s POS feature, helping in-store and online sales with its seamless POS system.
The strategy is easy enough. First, look back to the past. What were your best sellers? What products sold like hotcakes? Is it electronics, fashion, or home decor that tend to takes off? Once you know what’s in demand, focus your discounts there. For example, during Riyadh Season, fancy gadgets and luxury items seem to be fan favourites, more than any other item. When you stick a hard to resist price tag on your best sellers, you’ll attract a great number of high-spending customers.
2. Make Social Media Your Best Friend
If you’re not leveraging social media for consumer attention as a retailer, you might want to take a look at these statistics. As of July 2024, the number of people using social media is over 5.17 billion worldwide, with the average user accessing 6.7 social media platforms on a monthly basis. Such an extraordinary number can only mean good news for your business. You can widen your audience, increase your followers, and scale up your brand at a much faster rate. However, you need to be able to use this platform strategically to make the most out of it during Saudi shopping festivals.
Firstly, make sure all your social media accounts are advanced or business versions instead of standard accounts. A basic account, although effective, lacks the advanced features that will take your brand to the next level. Instagram business offers users access to features such as free business tools, viewing insights, and important analytics. Such metrics make it easy to track performance including views, likes, shares, and comments and gauge what strategy works best. It can also help you understand your customers and their needs better by outlining the type of post they engage with most. Worried about tracking? Get Insightful data at your fingertips by using tools like Ignite for their reporting and analytics service.
3. Be Chronically Online: Know What to Post and When to Post
In addition to switching to advanced versions of your social media account, it’s also important to remain consistent when posting. Since social media is vast and seemingly endless, it’s easy for posts to get overlooked and thus forgotten. In order to remain relevant in the digital landscape, you should post multiple stories on your Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook account. This will not only highlight your business but also keep it connected to its audience, inviting even greater followers. Moreover, regularly posting on Instagram will keep your business aligned with the latest trends and hashtags, making it easier to leverage these tools in attracting more attention
One of the most important ways to get noticed on social media is to understand when to post. All times of the day are not created equal, for Instagram anyway, and you should know what time works best for your audiences. For instance, if you’re looking to target younger adults, you should be posting during after school or college hours- since this is the time they’re most likely to check Insgtram. Once you understand when to time and schedule your posts, you will increase your brand’s chances of increased engagement and overall growth.
Saudi Seasons stimulate national economy; improve quality of life: Saudi Gazette
4. Make Your Customer Feel Like They’re Always Right: Be Ready for Anything
Great customer service can make or break a sale, especially during Saudi Arabia’s shopping festivals. Be ready for the rush!
Make it easy for customers to reach you. Have live chat, email, and phone support at the ready. Bonus points if your team is prepped for the flood of orders and questions! Want to lighten their load? Bring in AI chatbots to handle basic queries while your team tackles the big stuff.
And let’s be real: no one likes waiting around for deliveries. Fast shipping is a dealmaker. Partner with top-tier logistics providers to ensure your customers get their goodies on time—even when the shopping madness is at its peak.
Happy customers = happy sales. Let’s make it happen!
5. Create an Exaggerated Sense of Urgency to Beckon Customers
Nothing gets shoppers moving like the fear of missing out—FOMO! And during Saudi shopping festivals like White Friday or Jeddah Season, urgency can be your best friend. Think about it: when Nike does a 24-hour flash sale, people scramble to grab those sneakers before they’re gone. Why not do the same?
Run limited-time offers, throw in a countdown timer, and watch the magic happen. Just look at Amazon’s “Lightning Deals”—those things vanish in minutes! You can also crank up the urgency by highlighting items that are low in stock. Zara does this brilliantly by showing when there are only a few pieces left, pushing customers to hit ‘Buy Now.’
Deep discounts + time pressure = quicker decisions. So sprinkle a little drama and exaggeration and watch your sales soar!
Don’t Wait Till Next Shopping Season. Start Now
There is no time like the present, especially if you’re a retailer. Begin today if you want to maximise your sales, reach, and brand identity by the next shopping season. Ride the digital wave, take a-hold of technology, and get deep into your customers’ minds. Once you understand these strategies, don’t wait to begin your execution plan. You enjoy a unique advantage as a retailer if you are positioned in Saudi Arabia, with these endless festivals and massive customer turnouts. Thus, make sure you use every tool at your disposal to leverage this completely to your advantage until you’re at the forefront of digital retail.
