Panini America is shelving its annual Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions for 2020 as the company deals with the fallout from COVID-19.
A fixture in the hobby for several years, the promotions were popular with card shops and online breakers, with free packs of Black Friday-branded cards available to customers for several days during the holiday shopping season.
Panini says the decision to cut the programs for 2020 “was a difficult one but one that was made out of necessity.”
The facility used by Panini to print its trading card products shut down for six weeks under a state of Texas COVID mandate and the company says that put every product six weeks behind schedule. They say the effort to catch up “left Black Friday and Cyber Monday with no window to produce.”
“We look forward to these promotions just as much as the collecting community does and we sincerely regret having to temporarily cancel them for 2020,” said Panini America Sales Director Kevin Haake. “We look forward to getting back to some sense of normalcy in the year ahead and to returning Black Friday and Cyber Monday to the industry.”
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