Bush’s Fault?
Online sales went up. It’s way past time for the brick and mortar places to realize the mad rush for doorbusters is not a path to profit. Not only do they not appeal to an increasing percentage of the population, the people who do want to shop that way only get the doorbusters and you make no money on them.
One big reason is that Walgreens Black Friday sale this year was horrible. In the past they had all kinds of stuff you could get free with coupons. This year the free stuff was laughable. Like scrunchies for hair or mouthwash which you could get free with coupons at other times. Two years ago I scored DOZENS of bottles of FREE vitamins. Now it is so terrible that there were no bigger crowds than normal at Walgreens.
Glad to hear there wasn’t violence on black Friday. Remember a few years ago a woman pepper sprayed other shoppers to get an X-box. That kind of thing is just madness, glad it has tapered off.
I went out Friday around 10 A.M. to get a few necessities and noticed the local Wal-Mart was only slightly busier than on a normal day.
When I went to check out, there were six or seven cashiers standing beside their registers with no one in line.
I would guess the decline was more than 10%. I do think on line saies are part of it but a big thing was I did not see any real bargains except for one TV set.
Black Friday experiencing the effects of that fabulous Obama recovery and economy that everyone is (NOT) feeling. The retailers evidently couldn’t afford to have great sales, people weren’t buying unless there were great sales because there is a lot less money for non-necessities, especially if you had to buy healthcare, etc., and who the heck wants to go out to the mall or be in crowds with Omuslim’s buddies looking for large groups of people to shoot up or blow up? It all really puts me in a holiday “mood”. /sarc
Black Friday basically starts right after Halloween. Of course sales for that ONE particular day are down. The metric is meaningless anymore.
Recovery Christmas VII!
/s
Zipped in to Nordstrom’s today - saw something I immediately liked. Unfortunately his wife was with him ... but yeah, I did get something and after leaving the store looked at the shopping bag they put my stuff in and low and behold there was a Hanukkah menorah on it along with other designs. Cool!
I suspect many normal, sane people have tired of the mob mentality, media blitzing, crass consumerism and holiday spoiling of it. Amazon Prime (free shipping) is my primary store now.
Interesting that this explanation was mentioned in the article. I do think this is a factor.
While I’m not a big fan of Black Friday sales and try to avoid retail altogether on that day personally, my employer depends fairly heavily upon it, make or break for the year really. So, I was worried all weekend, hearing that sales were way off. I was relieved to hear 88% sell through today, very slightly off from last year but still pretty good. I guess my job’s safe for now, lol.
Crowds at local malls in my area were no bigger than any other weekend.