Grugger’s Way

Black Friday Bleak?

With another Thanksgiving Day behind us, we turn our attention to Black Friday.

The origin of the term “black Friday” is disputed.  One version simply derives from the idea that merchants depend upon the Christmas shopping season to make most of their profit for the year, and the traditional beginning of the “black ink” portion of the year is the day after Thanksgiving.

Another, more thoroughly documented version, connects the use of the term “black Friday” to Philidelphia, where police, taxi drivers and bus drivers refer to the day after Thanksgiving as “black” due to the high volume of traffic and resultant traffic jams, frustration, anger, and fights.  The police department of Philadelphia supposedly coined the term because of the simularity to “Black Tuesday” when the stock market crashed in 1929.

But, WHO CARES!  This day is for shoppers to hit the stores as early as possible, often lining up and waiting for hours to be the first to grab doorbuster deals, limit-quantity items, and loss-leaders.  Toys and electronics are two of the favorite categories traditionally up for grabs early Friday morning. 

This year, I think, the question on EVERY retailer’s mind is how sales will fare during this recession year.

I say, Black Friday is RECESSION-PROOF!   There is a certain amount of cash available and the time to spend it is when the best deals are available, so Black Friday will be BIG, as usual.  It will the the next three weeks after that when we will feel the pain.  Thankfully, there are credit cards and low interest rates.

Remember to save some available credit for New Years Eve.

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