For the last half-decade or so, the beginning of Black Friday has gradually crept back, with mainstream American retailers giving the shopping holiday precedence over the actual holiday, opening on Thanksgiving Day. Then the trend reversed, as retailers came to realize that they could harvest good publicity by staying closed on the holiday and making sure that the public knows it. We’re guessing that they didn’t earn enough money to make opening on the holiday worth their while. [More]
black friday
Nordstrom Rack, hhgregg, TJMaxx Also Want You To Know They’re Closed On Thanksgiving Day
By 10.12.16 — Updated: 10.13.16
Retailers Are Wearing Us Down: Shoppers Don’t Mind Holiday Creep So Much
By 9.20.16
Holiday Creep, and more specifically Christmas Creep, are common annoyances of modern shopping. When the school supplies disappear from shelves, the Christmas trees and lights appear, making shoppers feel like the holiday season begins earlier and earlier every year. This is becoming more normal, though: some recent survey results show that fewer Americans find Christmas Creep less annoying than in previous years. They’re wearing us down. [More]
Yep, Spring Black Friday Is Still A @#$@*$% Thing
By 4.1.16
Most retailers use Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, to kick off their biggest shopping season of the year, even if they also move the sales kickoff around a bit. For stores that sell home-improvement and gardening supplies, spring is their biggest shopping season. That impeccable logic led to the invention of Spring Black Friday, which we first noticed in 2013. It isn’t going away. [More]
Is Shopping On Christmas Day The Next Big Thing In Retail?
By 12.10.15
For better or worse, we’ve come to a point where shopping on Thanksgiving day is no longer a fringe case. But what about Dec. 25? With the exception of some vital retailers — drugstores, the occasional supermarket, gas stations, and, most importantly, movie theaters — most stores don’t even mess with the idea of opening on Christmas. But a new survey says that a not insignificant number of shoppers would be willing to buy stuff after they clean up all the wrapping paper. [More]
Online Retail Passes In-Store Shopping For Black Friday Weekend
By 11.30.15
Going online for your Black Friday sales fix is now just as popular as trudging out to the mall to shop, according to a new survey from the National Retail Federation. [More]
More Animal Shelters Holding Black (Fur) Friday Adoption Promotions
By 11.25.15
One of our favorite Black Friday trends that’s been spreading across the country is the animal shelter doorbuster: that is, busting adoptable animals out from behind animal shelter doors and into new and loving homes. The promos use the idea of “Black Friday” to push pets with black and white fur to create super-cuddly sale events where adoption fees are waived. [More]
Which Stores Are Open On Thanksgiving And Black Friday, And When?
By 11.25.15
There are two reasons why you might want to know which stores are open or closed on Thanksgiving Day this year: you want to go shopping, or you want to know which stores to boycott (or at least vaguely scorn) because they choose to open on the holiday. Whatever you’re interested in doing, here are the hours during which you can stop by the store and do it. [More]
Hide Your Stuff, Lock Your Car: Black Friday Is Also A Pretty Big Day For Thieves
By 11.25.15
Black Friday is not only a big day for shoppers, with stores throwing open their doors early (or staying open all night since they opened on Thanksgiving) and the mad marketing blitz of discounts, sales and deals coming at you from every angle, but it’s a pretty fruitful day for thieves, as well. [More]
Walmart Used Defense Contractor Lockheed Martin To Monitor Employees
By 11.25.15
As a growing number of Walmart employees began demanding higher wages, with some also calling for workers to unionize, the nation’s largest retailer hired one of the world’s largest defense contractors to follow the online activities of critical employees. [More]
Some Shopping Malls Forcing Stores To Open On Thanksgiving
By 11.25.15
Everyone knows that a handful of major retailers now choose to open on Thanksgiving, but most smaller businesses have remained closed on the holiday — whether it was out of a desire to enjoy the day, or simply because the extra expense of paying people to work on Thanksgiving wasn’t worth the few hours of additional sales. But now some shopping mall operators are spoiling the holiday for their smaller tenants by forcing them to open up on Thanksgiving. [More]
Can You Spot The Black Friday Deal? Sale-Stacking Makes It Harder
By 11.24.15
Happy Shopping Frenzy Week! Marketers no longer want to confine Black Friday to the last Friday in November, and instead have started the festivities as early as Nov. 2. Fine. Now we’re heading into the final week of Deal Season. Yet something isn’t a deal just because a retailer’s ad tells you it is. How do you navigate layers of discounts and know what a fair price for something is in the first place? [More]
Which Stores Will Have The Best Black Friday Deals?
By 11.17.15
How do you quantify what the “best” deals are, on Black Friday or any other day of the year? The most important factor should be whether the retailer sells stuff that you actually want, of course, and the value that those items provide for the money. Yet the sport of deal-hunting is all about the discounts, and WalletHub decided to compile raw percentages to figure out the best places to shop after Thanksgiving this year. [More]
RadioShack Starts Black Friday On Wednesday Because Why Not
By 11.17.15
Let’s get this out of the way: RadioShack still exists. While the chain declared bankruptcy and sold or liquidated all of its stores, they sold the brand along with about half of their leases to lender Standard General. That leaves about 1,700 SprintShack-owned stores with their doors still open and stocked with gadgets to sell, some of which may not even be Sprint mobile phones. [More]
Walmart Changes Black Friday Strategy: Drops Doorbusters, Bulking Up On Inventory
By 11.12.15
When Walmart stores across the country open their doors at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving day there will be a Black Friday staple missing: hourly doorbuster deals. [More]
H&M Says It Will Close U.S. Stores On Thanksgiving For The First Time
By 11.10.15
While some stores are dedicated to giving people a way to escape their families after stuffing their faces on Thanksgiving (we’re talking to you, Target, Macy’s and Toys ‘R’ Us), others are changing the way they celebrate the holiday: for the first time, H&M says it will close its U.S. stores on Thanksgiving. [More]
Toys ‘R’ Us Will Open At 5 PM On Thanksgiving, Stay Open 30 Hours Straight
By 11.9.15
If you enjoyed having a wide selection of toys available to you for 30 hours straight between Thanksgiving and Black Friday, we have some great news for you! Toys ‘R’ Us is keeping the same holiday hours as last year, opening their doors at 5 PM on Thanksgiving and keeping them open straight through until 11 PM on Black Friday. [More]
Target Will Open At 6:00 PM On Thanksgiving Day
By 11.9.15
We could be incredibly lazy today, since it turns out that Target’s Black Friday plans are pretty much identical to what they did last year. They’re opening at 6 PM on Thanksgiving Day, which is also what they did last year. They’re starting Black Friday-style deals on November 9 instead of November 10, so we’d have to change that. Otherwise? Pretty much the same. [More]
Marketers Are Robbing ‘Black Friday’ Of Any Meaning That It Ever Had
By 11.6.15
A few years ago, Consumerist looked around at the retail landscape and the nascent nationwide trend of stores opening up on Thanksgiving Day, and we wondered whether it was time to put a modern twist on an initiative from the Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to move Thanksgiving up a week to lengthen the retail season, which didn’t catch on. Why can’t we just leave Thanksgiving where it is and move Black Friday up a week? [More]
