@PrestigiousFarmer

Kind of a let down. They have a "Black Friday" page which shows roughly 10 products (one of which was out of stock before even gold members got to it) and an ad that Tomax is on sale but 4 out of 5 of that brand's products are now OOS. I'm not a marketing expert or anything but that seems like a bit of an ooopsie. There ARE other items on the site on sale it just seems a strange way to run the biggest sale of the year. Maybe when it opens to everyone the format will change a bit? I made purchases when it went live last night I'm just puzzled this was the format someone picked on purpose.

@TimmyTucker

It's possible. Once the 27th hits there will be no reason to hid sales behind limited closed system. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the first year that they implemented this Black Friday, early member, access format? If so, it's possible they just set up the ground and it's something that they will improve over the coming years, but that's just me being optimistic.

@PrestigiousFarmer

I think early access began last year. I was also gold back then. Many of the products I wanted went out of stock before gold members had access. I was up at midnight

@TimmyTucker we also made a blog post about stuff coming back into stock that we are hoping will be back just in time for the Black Friday sale. We planned for more stuff to be in stock but it really is hard when Japan doesn’t have enough stock of what we order and we make the best of it we can for Black Friday.

As for the deals, the 2 banners are just what we are focusing on. Everything on the site is basically on sale, just take a look at the masturbator category page. Obviously everything is not going to be 35-40% off.

We are sorry if the banners did not convey that clearly. We will try better going forward.

@PrestigiousFarmer this is the 2nd year we are doing this. For a online retailer like us, Black Friday is the most stressful time of the year for us.

Every BF all of us are basically working OT starting Friday all the way through Tuesday (that includes coming in and working full 8+ hours on Saturday and Sunday as well). We don’t get to enjoy Thanksgiving like everyone else. So we came up with early access based on member levels for a couple of main reasons:

1. We want our loyal customers to not have to worry about fighting for items. When someone that has stayed with us for years and have made their way to a platinum or demon member, we want them to feel appreciated.

2. It helps with the work load so the employees can relax a bit during Thanksgiving. When we stagger release the sale, we are able to process and ship the orders ahead of time. The loyal customers get their product early, and we won’t have as many orders to process when Black Friday actually starts. This also helps with morale, efficiency, and accuracy. When you are not as pressed for time, everyone feels more upbeat and we make less mistakes.


With that said, this year with covid makes everything 10x harder. Shortage from manufacturers, people working from home, we needing to schedule less people at different times so we don’t crowd the warehouse for safety reasons, FedEx and USPS delays with all the extra online ordering this year. All add up to make BF for us extra hard this year.

We are growing and learning and we hope you guys can understand a little bit from our perspective.

@**ToyDemon**

Understood, I know it sounded like a lot of complaints. The reality is I bought several items and wasn't displeased with my purchases. The setup was just less than optimal IMO but you know what they say about opinions. But I do understand the difficulties etc. in our current climate. I want to see you guys do well and appreciate the effort put in by you guys. In the past this sale has been sort of like finding out what Santa left under the tree for us and I was just missing that this year. 2020 is an odd year. I'm sure next year will knock it out of the park.

@**ToyDemon**

Hahaha! You hit all the points that I wanted to write on my fist post bit was to lazy to do so. I figured since Onaholes aren't so well known in the states that you must be a small(sh) to mid size company. I agree with everything you said and I'm sorry about you guys working through thanksgiving. Honestly, having the sale a week earlier or later (cyber monday sale I guess). A sale is a sale. I only shop actual black Friday because stores put the best sales on Black Friday so I have no choice. As long as you properly and easily display the dates and tell customers that it's to give your employees the chance to spend thanksgiving with their familys, I'm sure people will not care if the "Black Friday" sales is slightly on a different week.

I know how it is. I have friend that owns a small company and big sales like these put a big strain on everyone. I wasn't really complaining, th and more like helping ease TimmyTuckers dismay by having someone agreeable to talk to. Unfortunately, text is more monotone and dosent convey the chill in my words. I mean, I'm silver level so I don't even know what the black friday page looks like yet (technically I should be gold but my dumbass didn't find out about the Loyalty program until after I spent a hefty amount. To busy looking at all the products.) Heck, I just found you guys this October so I don't even know what the previous Black Friday pages looked like.

Regardless thanks for what you guys do.

@TimmyTucker "In the past this sale has been sort of like finding out what Santa left under the tree for us and I was just missing that". You couldn't be more accurate on this sentiment. Personally, I think when Amazon started doing Prime Days few years back and everyone else like Best Buy, Target, Walmart started following suit, I felt like Black Friday already kinda died.....

No longer am I looking for deals that you know would wow you on Black Friday, you would actually get better deals at other time of the year and it really takes away that enthusiasm from the old days. I remember it used to be: Thanksgiving dinner is over, I need to sit by computer at 8pm and start refreshing pages, or I need to go to Best Buy and wait in the cold cold parking lot because I need my $500 off my 48" Plasma TV.

This year is full of laptops at 300$, 65" 4K TV at $230 (how does this even make any sense anymore!?!? We joked about just buying everyone at the office one of these as a computer monitor instead, it's cheaper than most 4K monitors!!), and in the end there's nothing really to get at all and I feel less and less enthused about BF (also because we have to work a lot during BF).

Anyway, we hope 2021 will be "normal" and we will try to do better.

@PrestigiousFarmer You aren't alone. I'm creeping up on being a Platinum member and didn't realize most of the perks I got until one of my last purchases. One of the best "perks" they added a few years ago was the gift card trade in bonus deal. Whatever it's called. If you aren't taking advantage of that I encourage you to look for it on the website. It's given me incentive to buy during the year as well so I'm more aware of other sales now than I used to be.

@**ToyDemon** Retail has changed a ton in the last decade. You guys are doing a fine job I'm just a crotchety old bastard. Just because something didn't fit my exact preference doesn't mean it wasn't still good. I get cranky when I'm up past my bedtime and I don't have much of a filter between my brain and typing. I sometimes forget all the ancillary perks I've picked up by being a long time customer too. That BF magic I think has largely become a thing of the past everywhere. Which isn't all a negative IMO. Now instead of waiting in line in the cold for hours I get it over the interwebs sitting in my underwear. Or there are deals to be had throughout the year that make BF irrelevant. It should be a fair trade off but I'm a greedy bastard whining over first world problems. I remember last year or the year before you guys had some crazy deals around tax day. I just have to remember to show up to the website to take part.

@TimmyTucker Thanks for the tip. I'll look into that and also check out their past sales on the news posts so as to have some reference. That will be for later of course. BF sale will soon open up to the Silvers and I need to decided which items on my wish list I will end up getting. I'm definitely going to be hitting gold this weekend, I can tell you that. ;)

@TimmyTucker I agree, I am similar in my feelings towards BF as a consumer as well. On my end because I am on the other side of the coin as a retailer, I know how much effort and work it takes into BF and with ease of comparison through the internet, there will always be people who aren't satisfied.

We cannot please everyone (and past topics in the community will reflect that) and that's a unattainable goal anyway. However, we are doing our best from all aspects such as improving site functions, user experience, customer service, and not just focus purely on price. That's a battle that we will never be able to win against sites like Amazon or shops that sells directly from Japan.

Again we appreciate the feedback and thank you for staying with us! Happy Thanksgiving!