Deals, New Products and Freebies for 'Force Friday,' a Completely Made Up Star Wars Holiday

Following in the footsteps of Alibaba and Amazon, Disney is putting forth a shopping event of its own: Force Friday.

Staff Writer. Covers leadership, media, technology and culture.

September 1, 2017 3 min read

You probably know about Alibaba’s Singles’ Day and Amazon’s Prime Day, but have you heard about Force Friday?

In 2015, the minds at Disney and LucasFilm came up with Force Friday, a big event rolling out the merchandise tie-ins to the the first new Star Wars film in a decade, the highly anticipated seventh installment in the series, Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Two years later, they are back at it again with Force Friday II, the official reveal of all the merchandise related to Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which will hit theaters this December.

Now, if the move seems a little cash-grabby, we honestly can’t be too mad at the folks at Disney for attempting to turn this Sept. 1 into a shopping event, because the numbers already on the books speak volumes.

Ahead of the opening of The Force Awakens in December 2015, analysts predicted that up to $6 billion in Star Wars branded merchandise would be sold in the first year after the movie’s release.

And last summer, the Licensing Industry Merchandisers Association reported that Star Wars products helped bump the global retail sales of licensed merchandise up by 4.2 percent in 2016 to a whopping $251.7 billion.

Which goes to show that if you’re paying attention to what your customer wants, you too can create a shopping holiday of your very own.

But while you’re doing that, check out some of the coolest Star Wars items you can pick up during Force Friday to make your office feel like it’s in “a galaxy far, far away.”