Black Friday & Promotional Days

Did you make good savings on Black Friday last November? On 24 November 2017, you could get exciting deals in-store and online. Coming from the USA, Black Friday has literally flooded the Luxembourg market this year with great promotions although it has already been quite an effective practice for 2 or 3 years.

Whereas once you only saw promotions labelled as "Black Friday special offers", "Black Friday deals", and suchlike, companies are now riding the wave and also offering "pink Thursday", "colourful week", etc., to support the growth of the promotions.

This is an interesting development for the Luxembourg legal framework of promotion and sales.

GENERAL BACKGROUND IN LUXEMBOURG

Until December 2016 sales and promotional offers were regulated by two sets of laws1 which covered the following situations:

Regulated promotional practices: "official sales" ("soldes" in French), pavement sales, sales made under liquidation ("ventes sous formes de liquidation" in French); Prohibited promotional practices: sales at a loss (limited exceptions), pyramid sales; Other promotional practices: they were already liberalized by the Unfair Commercial Practice Law such as sales with a premium ("vente avec prime" in French), discount prices, rebates, etc. Discounts were legally admissible in Luxembourg provided that certain conditions were met: (i) the promotion did not use or make any reference to wordings such as "bargain sales" ("solde(s)") or any other terms suggesting "solde(s)" outside the legal specific period of "solde(s)" determined each year by the Luxembourg government; (ii) goods (or services) could not be offered for sale or sold at a loss, (iii) the promotion did not constitute an illegal liquidation of the goods or services; (iv) the offer for sale did not take place in the public place, outside a permanent shop, unless duly authorized by the local authorities; (v) the offer did not constitute either misleading advertising or unfair competition.

On 23 December 2016, a new law was issued to liberalize further the sales market and concerns "official sales", pavement sales and misleading and comparative advertising ("Law of 2016"). As a consequence, Luxembourg law does not prohibit sale at a loss and no longer regulates sales made under liquidation.

The Law of 2016 retains two main categories:

Official Sales - which can only be conducted twice a year; Promotional offers - throughout the rest of the year. Official sales and promotions still fall...