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I definitely didn't stand in line or wake up super early for Black Friday. I got up around 10:30 am, lol, and got to best buy by 11pm.
All in all, after going through all my reciepts for the little shopping I did on thanksgiving night and black friday, I saved about $200.00.
Might not seem like a lot.... but my budget was a pitiful $200.00, lol. So, it worked out for me. :-)
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If online sales were up 35% over BF 08, \"CyberMonday\" will probably have a smiler spike over last year!
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I got a $900 Sony LCD for $600 on Walmart.com, shipped free. Got up at 4am to order, took 5 minutes, then straight back to bed.
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I spent $88 on a $140 500GB portable hard drive from Apple.com. Currently have no backup device, and I already had the 320GB version on my Amazon list for $80, so it seemed the smart thing to do.
That, I'm afraid, was my only contribution to the economy on Black Friday. I still might head out to Target later, though, for a few Christmas gifts for kids of family/friends. If I could be bothered to get up and dressed. heh
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Did you get Time Capsule, or a 3rd-party external HD? We have the former and it's quite nice.
The Quad-Core iMac looks awfully tempting. I'm waiting to see if Cyber Monday has anything special, since my current Tiger iMac doesn't run Time Machine. Well, and we'll be upgrading our Adobe stuff pretty soon and the 3D & video stuff really shines on the quad-cores.
To say nothing of (cough) StarCraft 2.
3rd party. Time Capsule too rich for my blood. But this one works w/Time Machine.
Oh, and of course I never got up and went to Target. As if I was ever really going to.
It's important to keep in mind that these are industry-supplied tracking numbers. They have an obvious incentive to overhype preliminary numbers.
Last year (awful sales) had tracking results that were also wildly enthusiastic as today's. A couple weeks after the Page One rooster-crowing, they \"updated\" the story on page 32 with the news that, in fact, one third the chickens were devoured by hungry foxes.
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*rolls eyes @ Snuggies*
My Mother-In-Law bought me some and I'm supposed to pretend I'm surprised on Xmas and that I like them. I hate consumerism :(
It's not 'the blanket with sleeves', it's not a 'slanket'. Neither Snuggie nor the Slanket is a real invention, it's a god d*** robe that you wear backwards. This whole 'blanket w/ sleeves' story that college kid tells that invented the 'slanket' that Snuggie ripped off is BS imo. It's a robe that you wear backwards, kid probably put one on backwards by mistake and thought it was cool. Sheesh how people make a buck these days amazes the crap out of me.
When you try it on Xmas Eve, get back at her by modeling the Snuggie wearing ONLY the Snuggie. Bonus points if you shake your bared backside to the assembled crowd until she feints in embarrassment.
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Or, put the Snuggie on backwards and wear it like a bathrobe.
Unemployment high, people worried about the economy, record foreclosures, companies begging for bailouts, retirement funds tanked...I'm genuinely surprised that spending increased from last year. More interesting, that sales were up most in the Western US, where home values have also crashed the most.
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These stats are horribly incomplete/misleading. Online sales up 35%? Nope. Average online order size up 35%. Not the same thing. Shoppertrak also measures only traffic in certain malls, and frequently does not count people who enter through one of the mall anchors. Then they take that extrapolated traffic number and extrapolate it into a sales number. An extrapolation of an extrapolation. And the errors just keep multiplying......
Decrease in NE due to rainy weather? Actually, a little bit of rain without extreme temps or precipitation is a positive for mall traffic, as it limits outdoor activity options.
Not sure with the proliferation of home broadband that Cyber Monday is going to be a real event -- who needs to wait until they get to work on Monday to get online?
i don't know where you were...but where I was on Friday, it was not a little bit of rain. But BUCKETS AND BUCKETS! And people don't want to go anywhere when it's noah's arking outside.
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\"Not sure with the proliferation of home broadband that Cyber Monday is going to be a real event -- who needs to wait until they get to work on Monday to get online?\" AFAIK, the (horribly named) Cyber Monday has always been a myth anyway.
Blah...bogus Shoppertrak numbers. Like fredmertz said, an extrapolation of an extrapolation. My observations from my exposure to black friday...people at stores, people buying things...but not really that different from last year...the lines at the register this weekend haven't seemed to be all that long. The only thing surprising about the Shoppertrak numbers is the manner in which every news org. that I've observed this weekend has unquestionably repeated the data. I guess its a nice break from unquestionably repeating the chum from the realtor's trade association.
Was it me? Or did the media REALLY get into the hyping of black friday on a new level this year, constantly telling us that the quantities were in limited supplies, the shelves were going to be empty, and that the sales were going to be REALLY good this year?
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God I wish I could have missed friday, but it was payday and I have to hand out paychecks. It was a complete mad house the first hour we were open, over 600 people came in that hour! The hot item was a coupon for a 55\" tv and two pallets full of them were gone in less than an hour.
I don't usually go shopping on BF, but we needed a few things so I figured I'd take advantage of some sales. Got up early, but long after the stores had opened. Wasn't too crowded that I saw, but I stayed far away from Walmart, Best Buy, and the Mall.
In the end I think this year is going to be a big bummer for retailers. We decided to venture out about 10am. The first store we went to was out of two of the really in demand items on their morning sale. Everything else was still left in quantity an hour before their morning Friday sale ended. We decided to hit a few stores in the afternoon because crowds around the mall area were so sparse compared to previous years. Saturday Sam's Club still had some of their BF doorbuster items left and still at the Friday morning price. This included two huge piles of a big screen TV they had in their ad.
Saturday is usually insane around our mall area the weekend after Thanksgiving to the point you can barely drive. Yesterday was more like a typical Saturday any other time of year. It was a bit eerie.
Most of my BF shopping involved buying a few things for the kids off of Limited Too/Justice at 40% off that I would have bought anyway. I did that at home at 8am in about ten minutes time. At least around here the whole thing was a non-event.
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Lies. The mall I work in had a huge decrease in traffic the past few days and most of the retailers I spoke to said they were down by 10% to 25% from last year's Black Friday numbers.
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We were definitely down, to the tune of around 25%.
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The recession's over! Back to shop 'til you drop!
DOWn, baby, DOWn!
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I went to town with newegg and got some good deals on some PC gear.
Sears was down 12.45%. Double digit decreases.... the only thing they do better than anyone else.
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I know our store did $699K in sales on Friday alone, with our electronics department earning more than half of that for us. I was off Sunday, but I have to check our weekend numbers when I go in today as we keep track of our weekend sales since we ran a 3-day coupon promotion.
Blew last year's Black Friday sales out by over $100K. Not too shabby for a \"recession.\"
Turkey trots
flow like warm snow
thank god for Snuggie
I slept through Friday. Too much turkey from the previous day. Plus, when you have turkey and eggs, a turkey sandwich, and a turkey melt as your three meals for the day, you tend to sleep right into the next day as well.
Speaking of, I feel like a nap.
The winter solstice is most noticeable in the Northeast. Thus, if it's raining, it's dark and we're sleeping in. SAD is already kicking my ass.
That sounds awesome. I haven't made my own Thanksgiving turkey in a few years now (been going to a friend or relatives'), which means no left over turkey. It's gotten to where I'll probably just make a turkey on my own some time in december just to have the leftovers.