20081130 Black Friday Death Watch

Good news, Dear Reader: my Christmas shopping is done. I did it in fifteen minutes while playing an online game and updating my Facebook account. I know that writing it that way makes it sound like I put no thought into the presents I will be giving out, but that is actually far from the truth. I pretty much knew what I would be buying for each person before that fifteen minutes started.

I was asked by several people if I would be going out on Black Friday. All of the retailers made enticing offers to bring shoppers into their stores for the event and, overall, the results have been positive sales figures sharply contrasting with same store sales numbers going into the holiday.

In my early thirties, I opened a lot of stores and I ran a lot of sales events to promote those openings. The key was always to make it into an event. I pushed the local managers to get a local radio station to do a live broadcast so shoppers could meet the on air personalities and maybe even win some promotional items. Get the mayor or a county legislator in there to cut a ribbon or tour the store for a press release. Have the boy scouts cooking hot dogs out on the sidewalk. Do a couple of door prizes to work up the crowd. Throughout the opening event, stay on the load speaker with unadvertised fifteen minute specials to encourage people to hang around longer.

The key to all of that was to make it an event to get people to come in and then hang out as long as possible. Get them used to being in the store and to finding bargains in the store so it would be easy to make shopping there part of their routine.

The current way that Black Friday is promoted does not make much sense to me. It generates a higher top line sales figure, but little of that tickles down to the bottom line of the profit and loss statement. It moves people in and out of each store quickly chasing loss leaders. Almost every sale seems to generate the illusion of planned shortages in which the customer has to beat out the competition to win their treasure.

At some point, shopping became a full body contact sport. People look forward to fighting for their purchases. It has become the American version of the running of the bulls except that people are hurting other people instead of a provoked animal hurting people.

I wonder if that Wal-Mart store clerk on Long Island knew he was signing up for a death sport when he took a minimum wage job to feed his family. If he was not playing, then he should have simply told the women who broke down the doors and trampled him to death that he was just trying to earn a living and they might have stepped around him to buy their Northface knock offs for an extra ten percent off and marked down flat panel televisions.

Thirty-four year old Jdimytai “Jimbo” Damour came to this country from Jamaica looking for a better life. He was hired by a temp service to work in the Valley Stream Wal-Mart and on Black Friday he was placed at the doors both because of his size and because his workmen’s comp was not covered by them. The store placed a “Blitz line starts here” sign up to encourage a running of the bulls atmosphere and five minutes before the store was set to open, shoppers bloke down the doors and killed man.

The saddest part of this story is that this was not just one isolated incident; it was simply the most horrific of a widespread trend. People were injured in incidents like this all across the country. Also worth noting, the television marked down to $750 from $1000 had been previously marked down to $798 and was widely available online at the $750 price on Friday without the trampling.

So I do not feel like I missed anything by skipping the Black Friday crowds and shopping at home from Amway partner stores. I believe I would pay money to escape a prison riot so I do not see why I would pay to shop in something just as vicious.