Retailers Blame Drop In Black Friday Sales On Black Thursday

Zero Hedge ^ | November 25, 2012

[Zakeet]

With all bad news on the tape now having a suitable "explanation", be it a prior president, a tropical storm, the weather being too hot, the weather being too cold, the weather being just right, but never, ever someone actually taking blame for the fact that life is what happens when corporate CEOs (and sovereign presidents) are busy making "priced to perfection" plans. So it is with what is now a confirmed flop of a Black Friday, which according to ShopperTrak saw sales drop by nearly 2% to $11.2 from 2011, which in turn was a 6.6% gain over 2010 (and would be revised to far lower once all the refunds and exchanges to cash took place in the two weeks later). This occurred despite a 3.5% increase in retail foot traffic to 307.7 million store visits. The nominal drop in retail sales also occurred despite a nearly 1% increase in the total US population over last Thanksgiving, and a 2% Y/Y inflation. But fear not: the ad hoc excuse for this "surprising" loss in purchasing power is already handy: it is all Black Thursday's fault, or the latest idiotic attempt by retailers to cannibalize their own future sales by diluting the exclusivity of Black Friday, and which will force all retailers to follow the sovereigns in a race to the bottom, as soon every day will be the equivalent of Black Friday. But at least retailers have another 364 years worth of excuses for the conceivable future to excuse any and all store weakness. Next year: it's all Black Wednesday's fault.

[packrat35]

Word

[BlueMondaySkipper]

I would think lowering the slope of the sales curve by a slight extension would be helpful.

This

I work for the online business unit of a very large retailer. Our (online) peaks were certainly not as high this year compared to last, but our online revenue is up over last year. I'm looking at the real-time graphs right now and we are generating more revenue this year vs. last, for today, the week and the month. I have no idea how much if any of this is being taken from the brick and mortar sales, but my area is up.

And as far as lowering the slopes, amen brother. We test our site for peak loads and it's much easier to sustain a moderate load for a long period than it would be to handle all our sales volume in a single day. Cheaper too, probably to the tune of several million in hardware alone. In our case, we can do both as we tested to around 400% of what we actually saw on Black Friday (thanks to offloading a significant portion to Thanksgiving evening).