Yes, you love it, we love it, EVERYONE loves it. So much so, last year the amount of money the great British public parted with was up +11.7% to £1.39B (thank you America, we are now adopting your retail trends) according to data from IMRG. And this was online sales only. In the US, the period known as Black Friday (including CyberMonday) was $19.6B. Approximately 58 million people chose to do their shopping online only, versus roughly 51 million at physical stores only (a drop of 1.6% from 2016 in physical stores) (practicalcommerce.com). 2018 is projected that the average adult is expected to drop $483.18 each (finder.com). Yeah, I could bore you stupid with stats here, but I won’t.

What does this mean, well – you know, it’s a time of year that we at Wampler spend a lot of time planning to making sure our big hitters are released on the run-up to this period – the eagle-eyed amongst you would have heard Brian say in numerous NAMM videos last January that we didn’t really have anything new to show this year as everyone shows the new stuff, so it all gets lost in the mix, and also if you show it in January there isn’t a big retail opportunity to drop them for about 10 months. Doesn’t make sense really. Does that mean we won’t be showing anything this January? Well, you’ll have to wait and see, but from what I can see from here we may show a proto of something quite extraordinary, but then again we might not. Who knows? Well, we do, but we aren’t in a position to speak about that yet!

Looking around the market place this week has been fascinating… I’ve seen lots of companies like us who are giving a flat 15% off everything, to reward the people who buy from us all year round… then there are the stores. A lot of them are just banging stuff out at a discount, and it’s awesome, but some stuff has been NOS that is cheap, which is even more awesome, but a lot of it is the just dead stock that needs to go. So far today I’ve been tempted by a guitar I don’t need and won’t ever play, an amp that is COMPLETELY unsuitable for my house and gigs and about 8 plugins for Logic and FCPX that I simply don’t understand. And my inbox… I’m on the verge of turning it all off… PLEASE stop emailing me, or I might just unsubscribe from you, I don’t mind receiving your news once a week, but one company has sent me 6 emails in the last 48 hours. I might get something from one of their competitors just to air my displeasure at their overbearingness… is that a word? Did I just make that up?

Black Friday is insane. I love it. Please, before you go anywhere else today and this weekend, make sure you pick up the brand new Fuzztration from our site, or a Pantheon… or one of our older models, direct from the factory, at 15% off. That’s 15% you can put to your next piece of gear… and buy them right here!