On the way back from work I often pass the expanded Bicester Village Designer Outlet Centre. So it was interesting to have time to stop and have a look today. People were standing four deep in a Disneyland style queue outside Pandora, one of the most popular stores on Black Friday.
Later in the day I saw people getting personal service in the Pandora in Abingdon
In Abingdon, the national chains had Black Friday discounts with offers like 20% off everything or 25% off everything.
Personally I think it best only to buy what you were intending to buy anyway and take advantage of any Black Friday discount, but not to go searching for things you would not otherwise buy.
Another American custom together with Trick or Treat! The first recorded use of the term “Black Friday” was applied not to holiday shopping but to financial crisis: specifically, the crash of the U.S. gold market on September 24, 1869. Two notoriously ruthless Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, worked together to buy up as much as they could of the nation’s gold, hoping to drive the price sky-high and sell it for astonishing profits. On that Friday in September, the conspiracy finally unraveled, sending the stock market into free-fall and bankrupting everyone from Wall Street barons to farmers. The most commonly repeated story behind the post-Thanksgiving shopping-related Black Friday tradition links it to retailers. As the story goes, after an entire year of operating at a loss (“in the red”) stores would supposedly earn a profit (“went into the black”) on the day after Thanksgiving, because holiday shoppers blew so much money on discounted merchandise.
Good explanation!
It appears that very few Black Friday “bargains” are offers at the lowest price all year. It is another way, as Janet observes, of luring buyers into improving the profits of sellers.
I tried to get a Black Friday bargain in a local pub – no joy;-)
I see the “twig” has arrived on the market place?
I presume what you meant to say was, ‘isn’t it good that someone has kindly donated a christmas tree to the town’