Black Friday

Unless you've been living in a cave somewhere you've probably heard the story about the Wal-Mart employee who was trampled to death last Friday when a mob of crazed consumers stormed his store in a rush to purchase assorted crap at special early-bird prices. It's getting a lot of ink about how our society is degenerating, about how evil Wal-Mart is, about how evil big-box retailers are in general, and about how They (the ubiquitous "they" who are always responsible for everything) should do something about situations like these. As usual, the actual issues are being ignored in favor of shouting, hand-wringing, and passing of the buck...

First, let's consider Black Friday. It's called that because conventional wisdom claims that this is the day when retail businesses break even (or "go into the black") for the year. In some cases this is literally true, as retail companies will generally make somewhere between 15% and 40% of their annual revenue in the six weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's not just Christmas shopping, either; a lot of people will make major purchases at this time of year in order to get the tax deductions for the current year's return. Cars, computers, office equipment, and anything else you can write off will see a major upswing this time of year. But it's still going to be the big-ticket gifts that draw most of the attention...

So if there are both cultural and financial reasons why this buying frenzy is going to happen each year, why aren't retailers ready for it? Well, actually, most of them are. Any company that experiences increased sales in the last seven weeks of the year will have been sending extra merchandise to its stores for the last three to six months, as well as laying out aisle set-ups and product displays. Some chains will actually have reduced hours on the Wednesday and Thursday before just to get ready for Black Friday, and will engage extra personnel for the holidays starting that morning. Unfortunately, they will probably also have been advertising special sale items and prices for that day only...

And therein lies the problem. Since every retailer is having a sale, and since they know that people will probably blow their entire budget within minutes of entering the first retail store they go to, every retailer is also trying to get you to go to THEIR sale first. This is how the Black Friday phenomenon began in the first place. Years ago, there were week-long specials offered in the week after Thanksgiving; then these were shortened to three-day sales (covering the rest of the holiday weekend) to try to get people to come and drop all of their money in those places first. This led to one-day sales, which led to part-of-one-day sales, which led to stores opening earlier and earlier that day. This year it seems like every major chain was opening early, some as early as 4 AM local time, and offering specials that are only good for 6 to 8 hours, just to try to get your money before someone else does...

Which leads to crowds of people going into a feeding frenzy trying to get those elusive deals before the stores sell out of everything good ("Remember, no rainchecks on these deals!"). Which leads to some poor fellow getting trampled to death. Which leads to much wailing and gnashing, and cries for regulation to prevent this from happening again - as long as it doesn't interfere with people's ability to obtain various comsumer crap at special low prices...

In the long run, there's no point in expecting people to stop going to these sales in protest; people for the most part want everyone ELSE to stay home in protest - so they can get all of the really good deals for themselves. It's no use expecting the government to step in, either; retailers (especially big, powerful retailers like Wal-Mart) have good lobbyists and lots of spokespeople who will cry piously about the need for retail sales to support a strong economy and provide jobs. The best we're likely to see is that if enough people sue Wal-Mart (and other retailers) over the injuries (and, in at least one case, wrongful death) caused by these situations, the retailers will have no choice but to change the way they allow people to enter the store on Black Friday and hire more security people, simply because it will be cheaper to do so than to keep paying off the huge injury and wrongful death settlements...

Unless, of course, online retail companies finally succeed in killing off the real-world retailers. But that's a post for another day...