Amazon SA will run an Early Black Friday Sale from Wednesday, 21 October, more than five weeks before Black Friday itself on 27 November. It is promising discounts of up to 50% on electronics and headphones, 45% on beauty, baby care and DIY tools, and 40% on gaming and home goods.

Prime members get 24 hours of early access. And it only costs R59 a month or R399 a year.

Amazon has named brands taking part, including Asus, Dell, Garmin, Huawei, LG, Philips, Samsung, Sennheiser, Sony and TP-Link, and listed products that will be marked down, such as an Asus Vivobook S14 laptop normally priced at R23,913 and a Garmin Epix Pro watch normally priced at R17,418.

It has not yet revealed the sale prices, but its promotional images also show iPads, the PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series S and soundbars, which suggests some popular gadgets could be included.

New Prime members can try it free for a month, which also gets them early access. Prime includes free delivery with no minimum spend on thousands of products, often same-day or next-day, plus the Prime Video streaming service.

Amazon's main local rival, Takealot, will again run its own version, the Blue Dot Sale, which usually lasts from early November to early December, with extra deals for TakealotMORE subscribers. TakealotMORE starts at R39 a month. Vodacom, MTN and Cell C have all confirmed Black Friday deals too.

MyBroadband's Hanno Labuschagne reported the sale and pointed out that shoppers can get early access by starting a free Prime trial and cancelling it before it ends. He also quoted Dia Wilson, marketing manager at Iser-Expert, who believes consumers have grown jaded with Black Friday now that it has become a month-long event. Amazon's sale page lists the categories and brands on offer. Capitec's head of financial crime, Nick Harris, has warned shoppers that criminals will set up fake versions of retailers such as Takealot, Game and Incredible to steal banking details.

The discounts are the headline, but the real contest is for paid memberships. Amazon's early access is a reason to sign up for Prime, Takealot keeps its best deals for TakealotMORE members, and Shoprite has its own delivery subscription.

Each company is betting that someone who joins for a sale will stay for the free delivery, which is the fight we described when SA online retail passed a tenth of all retail: subscriptions and delivery decide who wins. Starting five weeks early also tells you something. Shoppers have a fixed amount to spend over the festive season, and retailers are trying to reach it first.

For smaller online sellers, matching Amazon's discounts is rarely realistic, so the better play is to compete on what large platforms do badly, such as personal service, local stock or niche products.

For shoppers, the usual warning applies more than ever during a long sale period: go to the retailer's site directly, and treat any deal that arrives by message or unfamiliar link with suspicion, as we covered in our guide to protecting your bank account.

You might also like our piece on Checkers Sixty60 selling gaming PCs, Shein's SA growth slowing, and Takealot's Made Local challenge.

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