Pattern: Black Friday Is About More Than Orders — It's About Organic Traffic After the Event | Black Friday Micro-Interview

【Ebrun Original】As Black Friday ad costs rise, how can investments continue to drive sales after the event ends? Pattern has made improving organic product rankings and accumulating organic traffic a key goal for this year's peak season.

Pattern is a company that helps brands expand their global e-commerce business. Its main collaboration model includes purchasing goods from brands and then selling them through e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, while also handling operations including product content, advertising, inventory, and fulfillment.

Regarding Amazon Japan, Hiro Suga, Senior Manager for Pattern Asia, said the team observed that ad click costs across different categories rose by 30% to 100%. To address this, Pattern moved new-customer outreach and content testing earlier to non-event days and uses AI to analyze prices in batches and check promotional pages.

In his view, peak-season investment should not focus only on profit during the event. For new brands or brands not yet in the top five of their category, Pattern is willing to accept lower event profit margins by increasing orders and accumulating reviews, striving for organic traffic after the event and reducing subsequent customer acquisition costs.

As the year-end peak season arrives, Ebrun has specially planned the "Push Through · 2026 Cross-Border E-commerce Black Friday Sprint Season" feature, inviting overseas expansion companies to participate in a series of interviews and discuss how companies can respond to changes in market competition and plan for the Black Friday peak season. Below is the Q&A content with Hiro Suga, Senior Manager for Pattern Asia, edited and organized.

Ebrun: Compared with last year, what changes have you made in Black Friday preparation and investment this year?

Hiro Suga: Investment has increased, and the biggest change lies in the quality and speed of preparation, not just budget.

We believe the outcome of the event depends largely on preparation before it begins. Once traffic comes in, it is too late to adjust prices, content, inventory, or advertising. Among these, price is especially critical. In highly competitive categories, price often determines whether a brand's product can sell.

In the past, we needed to analyze prices product by product. Now, AI agents can review historical price data for the top 100 best-selling products across various Amazon Japan categories in batches, helping us find competitive prices for each product in less time.

AI has also accelerated content production, allowing us to complete multiple rounds of testing and adjustments on non-event days and understand in advance which content is more conducive to conversion. Through this work, our conversion rate increased by 10% to 15%.

Ebrun: What goals do you most want to achieve this Black Friday?

Hiro Suga: We view the peak season as an investment and hope to get as many orders as possible during the event. More orders help accumulate more reviews, which in turn improves rankings and conversion and brings more organic traffic.

Based on our operations, after 2026 Prime Day, organic traffic for different products increased by 20% to 40%, and the number of reviews increased by about 15%. This means that after the event ends, we can achieve the same sales with less investment.

Therefore, for new brands, or brands outside the top five in their category, we can accept lower profit margins during the event to lay the foundation for subsequent operations. The breakthrough we most want to achieve is that at the end of the event, the organic ranking of products is better than before the event.

Ebrun: Around these goals, what specific preparations have you made?

Hiro Suga: We proceed according to a fixed timeline, handling time-consuming matters first.

First is price research, followed by inventory. According to our preparation schedule, products using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) need to enter Amazon Japan fulfillment centers one month before the event. Two weeks before the event, content is finalized and advertising begins, focusing on reaching new customers who have not previously purchased the brand.

One new task this year is to use AI to help check product pages during the event. Amazon Japan sometimes experiences abnormal promotional labels or restrictions on promotions, and products may lose promotional labels or fail to display promotions properly.

Now, AI checks whether promotional badges for each product are displayed normally, allowing us to detect problems within minutes instead of spending hours. During 2026 Prime Day, it helped us discover more than 50 products with restricted promotions. By adjusting points or coupons and, when necessary, submitting them to Amazon Japan for further handling, we quickly restored promotions for these products.

Ebrun: What noteworthy market changes have you observed this year?

Hiro Suga: The biggest change is how consumers discover products. AI assistants, AI overviews, and smarter recommendations are becoming part of the shopping journey.

In our view, these changes further increase the importance of product content. Helpful product descriptions, clear differentiated selling points, and solid reviews remain important foundations affecting whether products can be discovered and recommended.

A practical approach is "answer first." At the beginning of the content, clearly state who the product is suitable for and what makes it different, then explain why. We believe this structure is easier for AI to extract and also helps consumers and search engines understand the product.

Therefore, content preparation before the event cannot stop at completing page production; it must also express product information clearly.

Ebrun: Has the cost of participating in Black Friday become higher? How do you respond?

Hiro Suga: Yes, mainly because competition has intensified. More cross-border sellers are entering the platform, pushing up ad click costs. Based on our observations, the increase across different categories ranges from 30% to 100%.

At the same time, we have also observed that personalized recommendations on Amazon Japan are strengthening, with the homepage recommending products based on what consumers have previously searched for or related categories. From practical operating experience, a consumer who has never seen your product before finds it difficult to place an order directly on the event day.

This is also why we advertise in advance. Building consumer awareness on non-event days is less costly than waiting until the event day to compete for attention. Developing a clear strategy in advance and executing it consistently also helps reduce ineffective spending when costs rise.

Ebrun: Where do you think this year's biggest opportunities and growth drivers will come from?

Hiro Suga: I think they will come from execution. AI and agents will become increasingly widespread and become basic tools for brand operations. What truly creates a gap is whether one can start preparing early, proceed according to plan, and use the event to lay a solid foundation for operations in the following months.

Our judgment is that competition during peak seasons largely begins on non-event days, before the event starts.

This article was first published on the official website of Ebrun.