White Friday in Saudi Arabia: How to Sell More Without Giving Away Your Margin

"We sold more than in any week we've had. So where's the profit?" That's the store owner's question at the end of November. On the Saturday, the dashboard showed the highest order count of the year and the team traded screenshots. Then the bills arrived one at a time: the discount given on every product, the courier's invoice, the orders refused at the door, the returns and an ad account where the cost of an order crept up each day.

My view is that the damage was done weeks before the first ad, on the day somebody picked one discount for the whole store. I'd set each product's discount limit from its margin and stock before opening the ads manager.

White Friday, which many in Jordan and the Gulf call Black Friday, falls on Friday 27 November 2026.

Why do orders jump on White Friday while profit shrinks?

Because a discount comes out of margin, not out of price. A hypothetical example with round numbers: a product sells for SAR 200 and leaves SAR 20 once every cost of the order is paid. A 20% discount is SAR 40, twice what the order used to leave. The order now loses SAR 20, and the more you sell, the more you lose.

The second reason is the ad auction. Every store raises its budget that week and chases the same shoppers, so I plan with a higher cost per order than in an ordinary month. That's my reading of how auctions behave, not a platform's figure.

The third is cash on delivery, where the customer pays the courier at the door. Sale buying is impulsive, and a refused order costs you shipping both ways. Then come returns: as the Saudi Press Agency summarized the E-Commerce Law when it was approved in July 2019, the consumer may return an unused product within seven days, with exceptions such as made-to-order products.

A fourth reason never shows up in a report: some of the people who bought at a discount would have paid full price two weeks later.

One store-wide discount, or a decision per product?

A decision per product. The store-wide discount gets chosen because it's easy: one ad, one banner, and nobody needs a spreadsheet.

The common way starts from the ad: a competitor's percentage goes on everything, and the week is judged by order count and return on ad spend. A product that sells unaided gets the same cut as one that has sat in the warehouse since spring.

I start from two sheets, sales and warehouse, and read them before the ad report. On the path I work along, the offer comes before the ad: market, then offer, then ad, with revenue at the end. The sheets show what moves unaided, what doesn't, and how much each order leaves.

At Argan Package in Saudi Arabia I built a campaign for slow-moving products from sales and warehouse data. Sales of those products rose 400% in seven days, according to my campaign records. Across the slow-stock clearance there, more than 5,000 products were cleared, and the discount wasn't store-wide: part of the range went out at 50% off, and other products moved once their results were explained more clearly and the target audience was changed completely.

The discount-limit worksheet: how far can you cut before an order loses money?

You can cut up to the discount limit, the largest discount at which an order still covers its own costs. At the limit itself the order earns nothing and pays nothing toward salaries, rent or the platform subscription, so treat it as the most you can give, not the target. To find it, divide the order's contribution by the selling price. Contribution is what's left of the price after the costs in lines 2 to 6.

Copy the worksheet and fill in the last column for your best sellers and slowest movers. The other three columns are a hypothetical example with round numbers for one store, with prices and costs all excluding VAT: the displayed price divided by 1.15, and costs as they appear on supplier invoices before tax. That is for a VAT-registered store; if yours isn't registered, enter the price and costs as you actually receive and pay them.

Line (SAR)	Product A: fast seller	Product B: slow stock	Product C: moderate seller	Your product
1. Selling price excluding VAT	200	250	300
2. Product cost	120	60	150
3. Shipping and packaging	24	24	24
4. Payment or cash-on-delivery fee	6	6	8
5. Expected ad cost per order	20	20	28
6. Allowance for refused and returned orders	10	10	12
7. Total costs (lines 2 to 6)	180	120	222
8. Contribution per order (line 1 minus line 7)	20	130	78
9. Discount limit (line 8 ÷ line 1)	10%	52%	26%
10. Decision	No discount	Deep discount, within the limit	Bundle or gift

Now apply a flat 20% to all three in the hypothetical example. Product A, the product from the first example, loses SAR 20 on every order. Product C keeps SAR 18 of its SAR 78. Product B keeps SAR 80 and could have taken a deeper cut to shift stock that isn't moving. One percentage, three outcomes, and nobody chose any of them.

Three lines need care. In line 5, enter the cost per order you expect in sale week, not your yearly average. Work it out from the store, not the ad platform: total ad spend divided by orders that were delivered and paid, because a platform counts a refused order as an order and two platforms can each claim the same one. In line 4, use the average of your payment fees weighted by each method's share of orders, including installment providers if you offer them, and take each fee from your contract. For line 6, add up what refused and returned orders cost you last season (shipping both ways, repacking, damaged goods) and divide by the orders that were delivered and paid. The arithmetic is approximate on purpose: a percentage-based payment fee falls slightly with the price, and I ignore that.

With slow stock you may go past the limit deliberately, because the goods are paid for and their shelf space costs money. Even then, don't take the price below what you will still pay out to fulfill the order, which is lines 3 to 6. In the hypothetical example that is SAR 60 on Product B's SAR 250, so the deepest deliberate cut is 76%; beyond it you are paying to give the product away. Write that decision down before the season.

What works instead of a store-wide discount, and which products stay at full price?

Four things work: a bundle, a gift, a minimum basket value, and a deep cut confined to slow stock.

A bundle sells a mid-margin product with one that completes it, so the discount is spread over a larger basket; see building a bundle around one use and checking its margin. A gift costs you what you paid for it, not what it sells for. On Zid, a Saudi e-commerce platform, the Help Center describes "marketing bundles" as offers where the shopper buys one product and gets another free or at a discount, applied automatically in the cart with no code, provided the gift product is in stock. Count your gift stock before you announce it.

Argan Package's Saudi National Day 95 campaign, in September 2025, was built this way: discounts of up to 35%, gifts for the first 100 orders and fast domestic shipping. That gave shoppers three reasons to buy where a flat percentage gives one. I mention it for its structure; I have no result figure to publish.

A minimum basket value ties the gift or free shipping to a total you set above your usual order value, so you pay for the offer only on orders larger than the ones you were already getting.

The deep cut belongs on slow stock, after ranking slow-moving stock before you discount it. That is the work I do in slow-stock clearance.

The products I don't discount: anything that sells unaided on a thin margin, anything newly arrived whose price hasn't been tested, and anything with barely enough stock for a normal month.

What should you prepare week by week before 27 November 2026?

The decision first, then stock and the license, then the store, and the ads last.

This week, 10 to 16 October. Fill in the worksheet and freeze your prices. Don't raise a price in October to cut it in November. Google's help page sets conditions for showing a struck-through price beside the sale price: the sale price must be lower than the base price, the discount must be more than 5% and less than 90%, and in the countries the page lists, the base price must have been in effect for 30 days within the past 200. I didn't find Saudi Arabia in the country lists on that page, so don't build your offer on the strikethrough appearing in Google's ads. Wherever you sell, strike through only a price you actually sold at.

Weeks two and three, to 30 October. Sort products into three lists: deep discount, bundle or gift, and full price. Order the bundle and gift stock you're short of, and agree with your courier how many parcels it can collect a day. Apply for the discount license once the worksheet has settled your percentages; the next section covers what the ministry has said. Set up a WhatsApp confirmation message for cash-on-delivery orders, sent before the parcel goes to the courier, and decide now what happens to an order nobody confirms.

Weeks four and five, to 13 November. Build the offers with start and end dates in your store platform, whether Salla, Zid or your own build. Then go through the checkout yourself and see whether an old coupon stacks with the new offer and pushes the discount past the product's limit.

In Google Merchant Center, rely on the sale price (sale_price) in your product feed, because the Promotions help page lists 13 eligible countries and neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE is among them. Give the sale price in the feed the same start and end dates as the offer in the store, then open Merchant Center once the offer is live and confirm the feed price matches the product page. Prepare the ad creative and offer pages. Before week five ends, place a test order on the offer and confirm the purchase reaches GA4 and every ad platform you use with its discounted value.

Week six, 14 to 20 November. Start with existing customers on WhatsApp and email before any new audience. Reaching them doesn't go through an auction. Launch the offer campaigns this week, once their ads have been reviewed, so the final week is for budget and not for building.

The final week. Don't rebuild the ad account during the peak days. Smart Bidding in Google Ads has seasonality adjustments. Google says the tool tells bidding about an expected change in conversion rate, suits short events of 1 to 7 days and may not work as well beyond 14. It also says Smart Bidding already handles seasonal events. Use it for the peak days only, or leave it alone. Google's page describes a bidding adjustment and says nothing about budget, so check your campaigns' daily budget caps yourself before the peak.

What does the Saudi Ministry of Commerce say about online store discounts?

The ministry issues licenses for announced discounts, and online stores are covered alongside physical shops. In its announcement of the National Day 95 discount season, reported by the Saudi Press Agency on 2 September 2025, the ministry opened licenses electronically to commercial establishments and online stores through its discounts system at sales.mc.gov.sa. The license carries a barcode a shopper can scan with a phone camera to see the type of discount, its percentage, its duration and the business's details. The ministry also said its inspection rounds cover online stores.

The E-Commerce Law, in the agency's 2019 summary, also lets the consumer cancel an order if delivery is more than 15 days late, calls for the store to disclose its contact details and the business address on its commercial register, and carries fines of up to SAR 1 million. Don't sell in one week what you can't ship.

What I won't answer here: the fee, the number of discount days allowed in a year, and whether a coupon, a bundle or a gift needs a license. Read the ministry's discount license service page, or ask the ministry before you announce anything.

What should you measure during White Friday week and after it?

Contribution, not order count. During the week, check three numbers each morning: the contribution of yesterday's orders after discount and ad cost, the stock left of offer and gift products, and the share of cash-on-delivery orders confirmed before shipping. If the cost per order rises above what you entered in line 5, the product's limit is lower than you planned. Recalculate line 9 with the new cost, and if your discount is now past the limit, pause the product's ad and keep its offer. Return on ad spend can't settle this alone; see working out break-even ROAS from your margin.

After the week, don't close the books until the return window has passed and the couriers have paid over the cash they collected. Then ask what the season was worth: how many of the week's customers bought for the first time, and how many came back and paid full price before the end of January? Tag them now. If the season's customers only come back for a discount, it cost more than its report shows.

What to do this week

Open the sales and warehouse sheets and pick 10 products: your five best sellers and your five slowest movers. Fill in the worksheet for each and write a decision beside it. Then freeze your prices and open the discount license page on the Ministry of Commerce website.

If your worksheet needs a second reader before you announce a percentage, that is part of my work in e-commerce growth. Request a consultation and send the sales and warehouse sheets.

Want your team trained on this? Corporate training programs.