Lots of cheery “news” about record on-line sales, soaring consumer debt, one mall packed to capacity.
Maybe metro Detroit is an island of despondency? The local “news” Thursday night, did it’s usual check of the line outside of Best Buy. Usually, there is a line and the “report” is carefully stage managed with people in the line reciting all the doorbusters the store has on offer. At 11PM this Thursday evening, the “news” was, again, at Best Buy. The store had the barricades for the line set up, but there was not a single person in line. And the weather this weekend has been unusually mild for the time of year.
Friday, the noon local “news” did a live report from a suburban mall. Unlike the mall the national “news” keeps nattering about, there was no mob at the metro Detroit mall. The few people walking down the mall during the report were no more numerous that any weekday afternoon, in the mall near my home.
Like most Black Fridays, I usually spend the day at work rather than shopping. Same deal this year, except doing the remote work thing.
Did go and do some Saturday shopping just to get into the holiday spirit.
Kohl’s - Used to like shopping there for the selection in clothing. This trip, not so much. Lines not super long, and they had 4 or 5 cashiers open, so check-out was relatively quick.
WalMart - Not super busy. One row of refrigerator doors taped off, and various sections seemed light on product. Bakery items on sale - grabbed a pumpkin pie. In addition to self- checkout availability, shorter lines at WalMart too.
I guess more people are shopping on-line. I would say this is bad news for department store salespeople, but those seem to have disappeared years ago anyway.
My big purchases this weekend were a pair of sneakers for my wife (at half the usual price) and a second-hand cookbook on E-Bay.
A friend and I went to Costco about 3-4pm on Black Friday. Picked up my new glasses, which took less than a week. No problems getting or out. No significant lines, nice and quiet. They still had the 75" HDTV available from their Black Friday ad.
We generally avoid Black Friday shopping. We did a little bit of online shopping prior to Thanksgiving. Saturday, we happened to stop into Sam’s club, which was not terribly crowded. I suspect that online shopping is dwarfing in-person shopping at this point.
The Shop all you can! was in Portuguese but the Black Friday was in American! There is a lot of English and American influence in Portugal. Port wine was created by the Brits! To stabilize the wine during the Channel crossing they added brandy! Portuguese railroads, built by Brits, run on the left side of the road. As far as I know, Rothschild smuggled British gold to Wellington via Portugal. All the American fast foods are here and a lot of the advertising use English catch phrases.
BTW, the Porto wine caves are not in Porto proper but across the river in Vila Nova de Gaia
Watching BBC news the other night they had a story of Black Friday in Britain. The reporter clarified that it was the day after Thanksgiving in in the long weekend in America, but that it was just the “traditional start to the shopping season” in Britain.
No Thanksgiving in Britain. No big trip, no new land, no figuring out which crops would grow. Still there are various harvest festivals, but nothing on the order that we breakaway colonies have created.
@DB2 - In 2019, I think both concepts (Amazon returns & Smart Home) started as a trial at a subset of Kohl’s stores. It looked like it worked out, so both concepts got implemented across the Kohl 's stores.
Granted my visits to Kohl’s have become less frequent. But, I think I have averaged about a visit per year, and I don’t recall seeing either on prior visits. It certainly stands out.
