Many well-known retailers elected to close on Thanksgiving this year to prevent crowds in stores and give their hard-working employees more time with their families. Additionally, with Black Friday deals being spread throughout the holiday season, the typical holiday traffic peaks are flattening, with more days sharing importance throughout the season."
As we approach Super Saturday, December 19, and corresponding shipping deadlines, we expect to see some of the in-store traffic that didn't materialize on Black Friday appear as consumers wrap up their holiday shopping and make last-minute purchases,
Due to COVID-19 and social distancing requirements, shoppers were more purposeful in their in-person Black Friday shopping, causing significantly less crowds than we've seen in the past."
New consoles, phones, smart devices and TVs that are traditional Black Friday purchases are sharing online shopping cart space this year with unorthodox Black Friday purchases such as groceries, clothes, and alcohol, that would previously have been purchased in-store."
This mega promotional event is a mixed blessing for retailers. It provokes such shopping mania in the quest for a good deal that around three quarters of people will actually put off spending in the run-up to the event,
They flood the market with gold. The price of gold comes crashing down, and at the same time, the price in the stock markets comes crashing down on what is now known as Black Friday,
The most recent knowledge of the term came from the '80s when accountants of all the major retailers would say, ‘OK, before Thanksgiving, you know, perhaps we were operating in the red, we were operating at a loss, and then on this Friday, after Thanksgiving, we would just have this huge boom in all of our sales.’ And so they would go from operating in the red, at a loss, to in the positive, in the black,
As a result of controlling the supply and shrinking that supply and concentrating it just to these two individuals, the price of gold skyrocketed,
They were true ‘robber barons’ of the Gilded Age,
In the 1950s … in between Thanksgiving and what was often the Army-Navy football game on the following Saturday, particularly in Philadelphia where the game was played, the city just got overwhelmed with football fans, tourists and shoppers that were off for the weekend,
They befriended the president's brother-in-law, and they let him in on this scheme,
They both were very wealthy,
The original term Black Friday actually comes from Sept. 24, 1869,
It got rid of a little bit of the negativity, the connotation with that name and made it more about the sales, the excitement of the holiday season and that we're kicking it off with a Big Friday,
I would love people to be aware of where it actually came from,
People are working longer hours, often understaffed for the amount of traffic. Rarely, if ever, is there any kind of holiday bonus time,
On top of being overworked during the holidays, there is also the expectation that workers remain available to operate the store at a time that everyone wants to take it easy and be with family,
We’re not treated like we were treated during Covid, where we used to get the ‘thank you’’s and ‘we appreciate what you do,’
The holiday is a frenzied time for shopping. Sometimes stores will extend their hours, but unfortunately workers will remain an afterthought during the holidays,
You definitely notice stress for sure, people are short-tempered. There’s a lot of disgruntled attitudes flying around during this time of the year with our local customers,