A Gimmick Becomes a Real Trend - New York Times
Retailers are hoping the sales create early demand for goods, thus easing the late-season strain on the merchants’ shipping operations. It could also help them record early gains during what could be a cheerless holiday season. Analysts said ripples from the credit crisis and rising fuel costs, among other factors, could damp consumer spending.
Hell could freeze over, or St. Algore could start driving a Prius and flying commercial. Or the NYT could stop turning its “news” reporting into anti-Bush propaganda flyers.
Anyway, Black Friday looked great. Now let’s see if Cyber Monday can top it.
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I can’t speak for the rest of the country, but Black Friday sales here in Michigan were a disaster. From I’ve heard through the grapevine, I expect this to be a bad season for retail nationally.
wrong.
Nimrod, I was kinda under the impression that nobody in Michigan had any money anyway. I mean…Detroit….
Detroit operates under a kind of economic apartheid. The suburbs are rather well off, with Oakland county 4th richest in the nation, though the economy as a whole does suck right now. Both city and suburbs carry-on as if neither existed. Probably one of the strangest cities in America…
So then your grounds-eye view is that in Michigan, at least, the suburbs didn’t venture to the malls on Friday. Okay. That makes me wonder how this “surge” that was reported was geographically distributed.
Maybe it only happened in California and Texas or something like that.
Didn’t the state of Michigan just increase a bunch of taxes?
Why yes, I believe it did.
Anecdotal evidence only, my wife left the house Friday morning at 4:00 am and did not get back until 1:00 pm, all the stores she went to were crowded, this is in VA suburbs about 35 miles from DC.
More anecdotal evidence; I wandered a couple of malls in Richmond VA on Friday; lots of people, very few carrying shopping bags.
MattJ shopping now is an art form, my wife brought nothing home with her all is on lay-away to be picked up at a later time, children can’t get into it and no home storage until needed.
Went to the local Wallies World Stuporcenter Friday around 7pm to pick up a few things, was my fastest trip yet. Parking lot looked like 11pm, store had extra staff, one of the clerks said that they had light crowds at opening. Walmart no longer does layaway. OTH BestBuy here had a line at 7pm Thursday night. Kmart was packed too, they still do layaway. Some people use it to keep the gifts out of sight and some people can’t get or don’t want financing on Christmas gifts.
Reports I saw or heard indicate spending was up 8% over last year. Not sure where that comes from however.