Best Black Friday Deals from 150+ Retailers in Canada 2022

Black Friday is on Friday, November 24, 2023 in both Canada and the US. It is held on the day after the US Thanksgiving federal holiday which is the fourth Thursday of November every year. Cyber Monday will be on Monday, November 27, 2023.

Below you will find some of the best deals available as well as the start and end dates for the online sales at 150+ retailers in Canada. We’ll be updating this guide LIVE, so if you want to keep track of the latest and greatest deals, be sure to bookmark this page!

150+ most popular Black Friday retailers in Canada

The following are the most searched-for retailers in Canada based on search engine data, sorted by category:

*Terms, conditions & exclusions may apply.

In Canada, the earliest deals typically start around the beginning of November, but most brands and retailers start their Black Friday sales mid-month. Some even extend through Cyber Monday to the following weekend.

Best Black Friday deals by retailer

Amazon

Best Buy

You get their “Black Friday Price Now” on their pre-BF items – guaranteeing to refund you the difference if their prices go any lower on the day of.

Walmart

Canadian Tire

Apple

Costco

Home Depot

IKEA’s “Green Friday”

IKEA is offering additional value and savings on their sustainable used furniture buy-back program. They they sell the items as-is for affordable prices – giving their used furniture a second life and keeping it out of landfills.

Adidas

Bed Bath and Beyond

Samsung

Shopper’s Drug Mart

Bonus Redemption Event (Nov. 26 to Dec. 1)

• 70,000 points = $70 plus a $30 bonus points offer for $100
• 130,000 points = $130 plus a $70 bonus points offer for $200
• 250,000 points = $250 plus a $150 bonus points offer for a $400

Lululemon

Get up to 30% off their “we made too much” sale on leggings, joggers, hoodies and more – including the Wunder Under leggings that Lulu was originally known for – in a wide variety of colour options.

Most popular products on Black Friday in Canada

The following are the most searched-for products in Canada based on search engine data, sorted by popularity:

Electronics (TVs, Laptops & Tablets)

TVs

Laptops

Tablets

Computers and accessories

Gaming

Nintendo Switch

Nintendo games

Smartwatches

Phones and phone plans

iPhone

Android

Phone plans

Kitchen

Fashion

Headphones and audio

Toys and games

LEGO

Home improvement

Sports and outdoors

Black Friday shopping guide

In the past, Black Friday was predominantly held in-store, and Cyber Monday was centered around online sales. Now deals are both in-store and online for both.

With the extension of some early Black Friday deals all the way back to beginning of November and some Cyber Monday deals turning into Cyber Weeks or longer, the events have functionally merged together into one long pre-holiday season sale with new deals and announcements throughout.

Here are some tips to get the most out of it:

Shop early due to shipping delays

In 2021, shopping early was recommended by a number of sources due to global supply chain issues and shortages caused by the pandemic and the bullwhip effect.

In 2022, shopping early was recommended due to shipping network delays and increased purchase volume. For example:

• Best Buy email November 23, 2022: We wanted to let you know that, due to shipping network delays and increased volume, your recent purchase will take a little longer than expected to arrive.
• Reebok website: As the holidays near, we are experiencing a very high volume of orders, and as a result it may take a little longer than usual for your order to ship out. We are working as quickly as we can to get your order to you.
• Knix confirmation email: We have received your order and are putting it together for you. Due to a high volume of orders, your order may take up to 7 business days to dispatch from our warehouse location.

Products with high demand and limited supplies (eg. Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X/S) are the ones where substantial deals are much less likely. We recommend buying them early if you have any concerns about their future availability. If they are discounted at all, look at that as an added bonus.

On the other hand, most products that are promoted by retailers in Black Friday ads are either in ample enough supply or are in lower demand by consumers, so you can afford to take a wait-and-see approach and see if a better deal comes along.

Early Black Friday vs. Black Friday vs Cyber Monday deals – which are better?

In general, deals on Cyber Monday are a little bit better than Black Friday, which are a bit better than pre-Black Friday. This trend was confirmed by 2022 holiday shopping data collected by Adobe Analytics across all the most popular Black Friday product categories:

In practice, waiting for the best deal might mean you miss out if a deal is is popular and the product sells out. If you see a deal on a product you want or need for a gift that is within your budget and can handle missing out on saving a few more dollars, then it is time to checkout and be done with shopping.

After looking into the deals offered at over 200 retailers, we’ve noticed that they generally use one of 4 approaches:

1. Deals get better over the course of the sale period (eg. Rakuten)

Some brands continue to sweeten the deal to convince you to buy at the highest possible price in order to simultaneously maximize both sales and profits – a pricing strategy known as price discrimination: charging customers different prices for the same product or service.

On Rakuten, a site that provides cash back on purchases from specific brands, a number of brands used dynamic pricing via cash back discounts. Their cash back percentages increased dramatically the week before BF, but were increased even further on the day of. Some discounts were lowered over the weekend and then popped back up on CM, before dropping back to their usual, much lower, rates.

Telus’ phone plans were another example in 2022. The early deal was $85 for 50GB of data, while the day-of deal offered 100GB for the same price:

2. Different products/brands throughout (eg. Amazon)

Large retailers such as Amazon, Walmart and Canadian Tire will vary the brands and/or products they discount during the period – typically in 3 stages: early deals, day-of deals, and cyber deals. For brick-and-mortar retailers that offer flyers, sale stages can be up to a week long.

For example, in 2022 Amazon split their deals up as follows:

3. Same deals throughout, with minor adjustments (eg. Sleep Country)

For example, Sleep Country’s 2022 discount on BF was 15% sitewide “Today ONLY!”. On Cyber Monday, the discount was the same 15% sitewide “Today ONLY!”, but with a slight change: a free eye mask.

4. Same deals throughout (with varying levels of false urgency) (eg. Endy)

Niche, online, and direct-to-consumer retailers such as mattress, kitchen supply and contact lens companies will typically offer a flat sitewide discount throughout the weekend – or even longer.

Many are transparent about the start and end dates of the sale, but some apply a false sense of urgency to the discount offered, stating that it will end soon and/or including a countdown timer on their website or in promotional emails.

For example, in 2022 the mattress company Endy advertised 15% off sitewide and sent the following emails:

• Nov 13 “Black Friday savings on EVERYTHING” said 15% off everything until Nov 27 (Sunday after BF)
• Nov 27 “Black Friday ends tonight” states “Shop our biggest sale of the year before it’s too late”
• Nov 28 (Cyber Monday) “2 DAYS ONLY: Everything is on sale” until Nov 29
• Nov 29 “Last call for 15% off everything!” until Nov 29
• Nov 30 “SALE EXTENDED! Get 15% off” until Dec 6

This made it seem like the sale would end not only once, but twice, each time making it seem like the offer would only be available for a short time, only for the next “sale” to be a continuation of the exact same discount.

How to find the best deals on Black Friday?

The early deals typically feature different items than the sales offered on the day of and are generally discounted to a lesser extent. Discounts are typically better as the day approaches:

Planning, discipline and speed will help you get the most out of the sales:

Know what you’re looking for to minimize impulse purchases

It is really easy to get caught up in the excitement and overspend. Figure out ahead of time how much you can realistically afford to spend and what your budget is. Then decide what specific products (eg. Fitbit Versa 3) or types of products (eg. video game for PS5) you’re looking to buy for you and/or gifts for others. If the purchase isn’t required for the holidays, consider waiting for Boxing Day sales.

Rank these items in order of importance so you can prioritize shopping because you’re certainly not the only person looking at them and supplies may be limited as outlined earlier.

Check ratings and read reviews (including those here on Cansumer) beforehand to find the options available in Canada that best fit your use case and budget. A poor quality product at a super cheap price is still a bad deal.

Know what a good price is to avoid ‘fake’ deals

Higher demand for consumer goods, supply chain issues and inflation have all lead to higher prices, but that doesn’t mean you can’t ensure you aren’t overpaying or getting a price that is artificially inflated. The following services will give you an idea of the historical prices of a product, including the recent highs and lows and can notify you if the price drops:

• StockTrack.ca for Walmart, Canadian Tire, BestBuy, Staples, The Source, Home Depot, and more
• CamelCamelCamel Canada for Amazon products
• PC Part Picker for PC parts and accessories
• IsThereAnyDeal for PC games
• DekuDeals for Nintendo Switch games

Price comparisons can still be challenging as many of the best deals are for models that are either exclusive to the retailer or to the sale.

Add start dates to your calendar

Use the dates in the table above to mark the start of the sales at your favourite retailers on your calendar.

Subscribe to retailers to get early access

Many retailers will give you the option of signing up for email notifications about their Black Friday sales. Some even give email subscribers access to the deals a day or two early or an additional discount in return for signing up to their email list.

For example:

• Mejuri gives their email subscribers access to their sale 2 days before anyone else
• Samsung Canada will give you a $25 e-voucher for signing up

Buy from retailers that offer price protection or a price guarantee

Some retailers offer a price guarantee on purchases so if their price goes any lower during their BF/CM sale period you can submit a price matching request and they’ll refund the difference.

The best policies also apply to the lower prices offered by their competitors (retailers AND authorized dealers located in Canada) in-store, online or in-print for a period of 30+ days after your purchase.

Retailers that are offering price protections include:

• Best Buy
• MEC
• IKEA
• Dell
• Dyson
• Visions Electronics

Get notifications when a product is back in stock

The shift from in-person to online shopping means you no longer have to deal with as many crowds and lineups, but instead you may have to compete with bots buying up PS5s, graphics cards, sneakers and other products – basically anything with a limited supply that is in high demand – which unfortunately describes many of the best/doorbuster deals on Black Friday.

While not illegal, bots make it difficult for ordinary consumers to access good deals in a fair way. If a product you want is “out of stock” or “currently unavailable”, you may have to get a bot of your own to keep an eye on the product page.

And unlike shopping in-person, adding a product to your shopping cart does not mean you’ve reserved it. Approaches vary by retailer, but in general, a product in your cart is still available to be purchased by someone else until you’ve checked out.

The following services can track changes on product pages and send you a notification if the price changes or it is back in stock. They are particularly useful for online stores that aren’t monitored by a dedicated price tracker:

• Distill Web Monitor for monitoring any component of a web page including price or availability and get a notification when the price changes or it is back in stock
• Visualping for monitoring website pages and getting alerts when the content changes

Are Black Friday deals worth it?

While there are always a few standout deals, most offers aren’t particularly noteworthy and are similar to those offered at other times of the year such as Amazon Prime Day, Labour Day and Boxing Day as retailers often reuse and recycle the same deals year after year. For example, Walmart Canada stated in 2021 that around 10% of their 1,000 deals listed were the lowest prices of the year.

Some retailers seem to simply publish their regular sales flyer, title it “Black Friday” and call it a day. However, the timing relative to the holiday season makes it a good opportunity to buy gifts.

Items needed for Christmas preparations and gifts such as toys, luxury goods, bedding and winter clothing are always in higher demand around Black Friday, so retailers typically hold off on sales until last 2 weeks before Christmas as well as Boxing Day and into the new year.

‘Fake’ deals with inflated regular prices

There is evidence that some retailers artificially inflate their “regular” prices before sales start. In the US in 2012, Market Track tracked an 8% increase in prices beforehand for 366 of the 1,743 products they monitored and in 2013 360pi found that average prices across 8,000 products did not change significantly on Black Friday, and in many cases actually increased in the days leading up to it.

This makes the steeper discounts look better in percentage terms than they actually are to create a false sense of urgency and encourage impulse purchase decisions. This works very well as illustrated by a classic example of this practice:

In a 2012 presentation, Mr. Johnson, then still JC Penney’s CEO, said the company was selling fewer than one out of every 500 items at full price. Customers were receiving an average discount of 60%, up from 38% a decade earlier. The twist is they weren’t saving more. In fact, the average price paid by customers stayed about the same over that period. What changed was the initial price, which increased by 33%.

The Dirty Secret of Black Friday ‘Discounts’, WSJ

This practice is legal in Canada as long as the product is up for sale for a “substantial period of time” at that price or higher, but corporations can be fined up to $10,000,000 for a first time infraction. The ordinary selling price (or “regular” price) can refer to either the retailer’s regular price or the regular price offered by other retailers in the market and is determined by using one of two tests:

1. Volume test: A substantial volume of the product was sold at that price or a higher price, within a reasonable period of time, or
2. Time test: The product was offered for sale, in good faith, for a substantial period of time at that price or a higher price.

As a consumer, the best approach is to focus on how good the final sale price is and try not to be distracted by implied savings and large percentage discounts.

Black Friday in Canada vs US

The deals in Canada are generally considered not as good as those offered in the US. Deals in the US are often better with bigger price cuts than in Canada – even at the same retailer.

The strength of the Canadian dollar to the American dollar has played a large part in the how good the deals are in Canada. From 2007 to 2014, the dollar was at parity, giving shoppers near the US-Canada border greater purchasing power and major Canadian retailers had to offer their own deals to discourage them from traveling over the border to shop.

In years past, “doorbuster” or “door crasher” deals in the US have created large crowds as well as scuffles and altercations leading to a number of injuries and deaths over the years. While Canada has had its long lineups and crowds, the event usually goes much more smoothly. This could be due to Canadians living up to their reputation of being orderly and polite, or it could be that our deals are simply not that good.

The crowds and lineups may be a thing of the past as shopping shifts from in-person to online, with:

• online sales doubling in Canada between 2013 and 2019 from $136B to $305B
• many brick-and-mortar retailers in Canada closing or filing for bankruptcy
• these trends being accelerated by the pandemic: retail e-commerce sales more than doubled from February to May 2020, to a record of almost $4 billion.

What is the history of Black Friday?

The phrase “Black Friday” was originally used to mark the gold panic in 1869 when decreasing gold prices caused a US stock market crash (and as an aside, is an interesting read).

The day after Thanksgiving has long been considered the unofficial start of the Christmas shopping season in the US since at least 1939, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a Presidential Proclamation to move Thanksgiving from its original date of the last Thursday in November, to the second-to-last Thursday to lengthen the Christmas shopping season and assist the economic recovery from the Great Depression.

The term “Black Friday” was first used to describe the Christmas shopping rush in Philadelphia in 1961 when it was used by police to describe the crowding, congestion and commotion created by the heavy vehicle and pedestrian traffic the city experienced the day after Thanksgiving.

The term “black” is commonly used to describe days when major calamities have occurred – typically in the stock markets – such as “Black Monday” in 1987 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost almost 22% in one day or “Black Wednesday” in 1992 when the UK’s pound sterling crashed.

As the term continued to grow in popularity, there were attempts in the early 1980s to distance it from the negative connotation of disaster and misfortune by suggesting that the colour black instead had to do with retailers getting “back into the black” (becoming profitable) thanks to the Christmas shopping season.

The deep discounts have been known to produce a great sense of urgency and scarcity leading to long line ups and scuffles over products – particularly in the US.

Since as early as 2001, Canadian consumers have traveled to the US for Black Friday deals. Black Friday and Cyber Monday came to Canada in 2008 as Canadian retailers had to start offering similar deals in order to compete with the US and discourage shoppers from leaving the country.

Black Friday statistics in Canada

How popular is Black Friday?

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the biggest sale events of the year in Canada.

According to Moneris, in 2020, Black Friday overtook the Friday before Christmas as the day with the most retail sales and is more popular than Boxing Day.

• 37% of Canadians bought at least one Black Friday promotion in November 2019, up from 34% in 2018. (Dig360)
• 19% of Canadians, bought on Friday November 29th, up from 17% in 2018. (Dig360)
• Participation has been fairly consistent since 2013. (Dig360)
• 43% of Canadian shoppers plan to buy on Black Friday vs 35% on Cyber Monday and 34% on Boxing Day (RCC)
• Canadians plan to spend $792 in 2021 holiday shopping season, up from $693 in 2020. (RCC)

Black Friday vs Cyber Monday, Boxing Day & Amazon Prime Day

It is one of the most popular shopping days of the year in Canada, and interest has been increasing year over year based on search data, whereas interest in Cyber Monday has continued fade:

Search data

For consumers in Canada, it is by far the most interest-generating sales event of the year with a 64% share of the total average monthly search volume of the 4 biggest events. It is about 6x more searched for than Cyber Monday, 5x more searched for than Amazon Prime Day and 2-3x more searched for than Boxing Day based on 2020 data from 3 search data sources.

US estimated ecommerce revenue

Over to you

We’re interested to know – do you make a point of shopping on Black Friday? Do you shop more for yourself or for early Christmas gifts? Know of a sale going on that isn’t listed? Let us know by leaving a comment below!