Getting a UAE store ready for White Friday

It is not one Friday

White Friday in this region has stretched into a multi-week event, with the major marketplaces running promotions well before and after the nominal date. Planning a single-day sale means being invisible during the weeks that carry most of the volume.

It also sits in a UAE retail calendar with four peaks, not one: Ramadan and Eid, White Friday, National Day in December, and the Dubai Shopping Festival through January.

Prepare the operations, not just the offers

• Delivery capacity first. Your courier tightens at exactly the moment your volume triples. Cap your slots before the week, not during it.
• Stock depth on the discounted lines. An out-of-stock hero product mid-campaign costs more than the discount would have.
• Check your COD limits. A discount week attracts more speculative COD orders and a higher return rate.
• Switch the seasonal storefront on the day, not the week after somebody remembers.

The discount arithmetic that overstates your VAT

This is the one worth reading twice.

VAT is calculated on the amount actually payable after the discount, not before it. Software that applies the discount after the tax overstates what you owe on every discounted order — and across a week where most of your orders are discounted, that compounds into a real number.

Check it once before the season: take a discounted order, and confirm the tax on the invoice is 5 ÷ 105 of the discounted price. How discounts and VAT interact →

Discount codes per channel

A separate code per influencer, per channel and per campaign is the only way to know afterwards which one actually sold something.

Without that, the week produces revenue and no information, and next year you make the same guesses.