Black Friday’s black magic – 2004

2 Dec

The recent Black Friday sale was a good way for the entire country to go out and buy the things they needed, and things they didn’t need. It was also probably what the country needed to put a small gold coin into the “unstable” economy.

With prices so low on items such as electronics, apparel, books and other things, why would people hesitate to buy something they might need later on? People get up at 2 in the morning, and start waiting in long lines at 3 AM outside big stores such as Fry’s and Circuit City‘s, making sure they go into the store as fast as possible when it opens, and get the items they need into their shopping carts immediately. Many items such as electronics sell out within minutes on that day. Of course, such days are not good for all businesses. Among some other [very few, though] businesses, restaurants suffer because people focus more on buying stuff than eating all day, on such days.

Apparel sales are different in terms of being “all out” of the merchandize. With so many styles to choose from, the only thing that can happen is to not find something specific on which you had your eyes on for sometime. Also, for some reason, apparel prices don’t go as low as prices for electronics or other types of merchandize; even then, however, people love to buy clothes on such holidays, and the discounted prices, even though they are not that different from original prices [sometimes discounts of $10 at places like Anne Taylor LOFT and GAP] appear to be terrific deals, and perfect deals for almost everyone who goes to such stores on those days. The next set of holiday deals, near Christmas and then near New Years, are on their way. These two holidays do not offer sales as huge as Black Friday, but when both the days are combined [theoretically], they do offer bigger sales, and they occur within days of each other. Those sales are already here, and will continue until the first half of the first week of January.

Here is a picture taken on Black Friday at Old Navy in Emeryville. As you can see, it looks like any other business day, though people keep coming in, and exiting quickly to compare prices on different places around the neighborhood.

<%image(20041202-emeryville-old-navy-black-friday-2004.JPG|600|449|Black Friday sales at Old Navy in Emeryville, CA, USA)%>