Retailers roll out early Black Friday discounts

Major retailers and brands have begun rolling out Black Friday–style discounts weeks before the traditional shopping weekend, offering early markdowns across beauty, fashion, fitness and tech categories and a growing slate of limited-time promotions that extend into late November. Ulta Beauty opened a monthlong Early Black Friday event on Oct. 26 that runs through Nov. 22 with discounts of up to 40 percent and a rotating schedule of weekly category price drops spanning makeup, skin care, hair tools and fragrance. Luxury and fashion sites are also staging early sales, while athletic and lifestyle brands have refreshed clearance sections with steep reductions.

Ulta’s promotion features weekly highlights that include hair tools, bestselling skin-care sets and popular devices such as microcurrent and facial-tech items, with hundreds of products across brands like Clinique, Lancôme, Ghd and NuFace included in the rotation. The retailer is using a staged program of weeklong deals to spotlight different categories through mid-November, and shoppers who join its rewards program continue to receive accumulation and shipping benefits for qualifying orders.