Black Friday

Etymology

For centuries, the adjective "black" has been applied to days upon which calamities occurred. Many events have been described as "Black Friday", although the most significant such event in American history was the Panic of 1869, which occurred when financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk took advantage of their connections with the Ulysses S. Grant administration in an attempt to corner the gold market. When President Grant learned of this manipulation, he ordered the Treasury to release a large supply of gold, which halted the run and caused prices to drop by 18%. Fortunes were made and lost in a single day, and the president's own brother-in-law, Abel Corbin, was ruined.

The earliest known use of "Black Friday" to refer to the day after Thanksgiving occurred in the journal, Factory Management and Maintenance, for November 1951, and again in 1952. Here it referred to the practice of workers calling in sick on the day after Thanksgiving, in order to have a four-day weekend. However, this use does not appear to have caught on. Around the same time, the terms "Black Friday" and "Black Saturday" came to be used by the police in Philadelphia and Rochester to describe the crowds and traffic congestion accompanying the start of the Christmas shopping season. In 1961, the city and merchants of Philadelphia attempted to improve conditions, and a public relations expert recommended rebranding the days "Big Friday" and "Big Saturday", but these terms were quickly forgotten.

The use of the phrase spread slowly, first appearing in The New York Times on November 29, 1975, in which it still refers specifically to "the busiest shopping and traffic day of the year" in Philadelphia. Although it soon became more widespread, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 1985 that retailers in Cincinnati and Los Angeles were still unaware of the term.

As the phrase gained national attention in the early 1980s, merchants objecting to the use of a derisive term to refer to one of the most important shopping days of the year suggested an alternative derivation: that retailers traditionally operated at a financial loss for most of the year (January through November) and made their profit during the holiday season, beginning on the day after Thanksgiving. When this was recorded in the financial records, once-common accounting practices would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. Black Friday, under this theory, is the beginning of the period when retailers would no longer be "in the red", instead of taking in the year's profits. The earliest known published reference to this explanation occurs in The Philadelphia Inquirer for November 28, 1981.

History

Thanksgiving's relationship to Christmas shopping led to controversy in the 1930s. Retail stores would have liked to have a longer shopping season, but no store wanted to break with tradition and be the one to start advertising before Thanksgiving. For this reason, in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a presidential proclamation proclaiming Thanksgiving to be the fourth Thursday in November rather than the last Thursday, meaning in some years one week earlier, in order to lengthen the Christmas shopping season. Most people adopted the President's change, which was later reinforced by an act of Congress, but many continued to celebrate Thanksgiving on the traditional date.

In 2015, Amazon.com was the first to offer "Black Friday in July" deals on what they called "Prime Day", promising better deals than on Black Friday. Amazon repeated the practice in 2016 and 2017, and other companies began offering similar deals.

Analyst Marshal Cohen of The NPD Group claimed in 2020 that Black Friday is declining in favor of online shopping, and that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this process. The pandemic also resulted in holiday deals being offered over a longer period of time, even as early as October. Fewer people shopped in person on Black Friday 2020, and most business took place online. Market research company Numerator said sellers of clothing, tools and other items considered nonessential during lockdowns were not promoted as heavily because lower production meant less available to sell. Adobe Analytics reported that online sales reached $9 billion in 2020, 22% more than the previous year. Foot traffic to stores fell 48% in 2020 from last year, according to RetailNext, while Sensormatic Solutions reported a 52% decrease.

"Black Thursday"

For many years, retailers pushed opening times on Black Friday earlier and earlier, eventually reaching midnight, before opening on the evening of Thanksgiving. Kmart opened its stores on Thanksgiving as early as 1991, and was open on Thanksgiving Day for many years. In 2009, Kmart manager Freddy Moss opened at 7 p.m. on Thanksgiving in order to allow shoppers to avoid Black Friday traffic and return home in time for dinner with their families. Two years later, a number of retailers began opening at 8 p.m. or 9 p.m., on what became derisively known as "Black Thursday". In subsequent years, other stores followed this trend, opening earlier and earlier on Thanksgiving, or remaining open all day, beginning in the early morning hours. Some retail and media sources have used the terms "Gray Thursday" or "Brown Thursday" instead.

The 2014 "Black Thursday" sales were generally a failure, as overall sales for the holiday week-end fell 11% compared to the previous year despite heavy traffic at the stores on Thanksgiving night. In response, a number of retailers decided to go back to closing on Thanksgiving for 2015, and Walmart, although its holding firm opening on the holiday and holding its sale, also pledged to offer the same deals online for those who wished to stay home.

Retailers have received pushback from some consumers over opening on Thanksgiving Day. Shopper opposition to stores opening on Thursday includes the perceived over-commercialization of Thanksgiving, retail workers not being able to spend time with their loved ones on the holiday, and Thursday doorbuster sales forcing consumers to sacrifice enjoying Thanksgiving evening with their families in order to avoid missing out on highly sought-after items which might not be available again prior to Christmas.

Most retailers abandoned efforts to hold doorbuster sales on Thanksgiving in 2020; large crowds had been forbidden under most circumstances since March due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, major retailers such as Walmart and Target had already reduced their hours and dropped 24/7 operations in response to the pandemic, and several retailers known for opening on the holiday (particularly Kmart, which has typically been open regular hours) have rapidly declined. According to Adobe Analytics, online shopping set a record on Thanksgiving 2020 with $5.1 billion in total spending, 21.5% higher than in 2019. Most major retailers again closed on Thanksgiving in 2021, with Target stating that its decision would be permanent; the small minority of retail chains remaining open on the holiday that year were limited mainly to pharmacies, dollar stores and grocery stores, retail categories that traditionally do not hold doorbusters.

Black Friday around the world

Africa

Black Friday, in Egypt, started in 2014, being introduced as White Friday. The change of name was due to religious, traditional, and cultural concepts.

Black Friday deals started in Libya since 2019, also introduced as White Friday due to religious, traditional and cultural concepts.

Asia

The use of Black Friday shopping terminology started in 2014 in major cities of Pakistan which later changed to "Blessed Friday" due to religious reasons. Now Blessed Friday (Black Friday) shopping festival is being observed regularly all over Pakistan.

The holiday shopping season in India has traditionally been aligned around the "festive period" of major festivals usually falling around October or November, such as Diwali. Similar to US-style shopping events such as Black Friday, online retailers adopted the practice of holding multi-day promotions during this period, such as Amazon's "Great Indian Festival" and Flipkart's "Big Billion Days". India's Independence Day (August 15) had also recently attracted similar events.

Nonetheless, the concept of Black Friday has also been imported into the subcontinent via international retailers – a move that influenced some Indian retailers to also adopt the promotion.

In Saudi Arabia, black Friday started when a local e-commerce platform noon.com created Yellow Friday Sale which is now an annual event.

U.A.E. Black Friday started as White Friday campaign in 2014. In 2018 local e-commerce platform noon.com created Yellow Friday in the U.A.E. The Yellow Friday Sale is now an annual event in U.A.E., falling around the same time as Black Friday globally.

China

Black Friday is celebrated in China in a limited capacity commercially instead of as a major retail sale. Certain e-commerce platforms will run Black Friday promotions around late November offering deals on electronics, fashion, and imported goods.

Europe

Black Friday in Belgium has been seriously marketed by retailers since 2016. Online shops especially have broken sales records during the last edition of Black Friday, which provides a base for the further growth of Black Friday's popularity in Belgium. After 2016, Black Friday in Belgium has grown strongly. The number of participating shops have increased to over seventy during the Black Friday period of 2017. During Black Friday 2018, a total of 119 participating stores were measured in Belgium.

French businesses are slowly introducing the Black Friday custom into the market. Discounts of up to 85% were given by retailing giants such as Apple and Amazon in 2014. French electronics retailers such as FNAC and Auchan advertised deals online, while Darty also took part in this once-a-year monster sale. Retailers favored the very American term "Black Friday" to "Vendredi noir" in their advertisements. In 2016, because of the terror attacks in Paris in November the year before, some retailers used the name "Jour XXL" (XXL day) instead of Black Friday. An alternative was brought up by some online businesses in 2018, called "French Days", which goal is to replicate Black Friday during spring season (starting around the first day of May).

On November 20, 2020, the French government finalized an agreement with e-commerce businesses like Amazon and supermarket chains to postpone Black Friday promotions by a week. Discounted shopping promotions were to begin on December 4 instead, after physical stores shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic were allowed to reopen.

In Germany, "Black Friday" retailer advertisements refer to "Black Week" and "Black Shopping" in English with sales lasting an entire week (excluding Sundays when most retail stores are closed). During this sales period, stores keep their normal working hours. Although goods are offered at reduced prices, the prices are not cut significantly more than normal weekly price reductions. Apple was the first company to run a special Black Friday campaign for the German market in 2006. Apple never used the name Black Friday in Germany, but promotes only a "one-day shopping event". In the first years, mostly internet retailers have used the event as an occasion to attract new customers with discounts, but bricks and mortar stores have already begun to adapt.

Black Friday was introduced in 2014.

North America

The large population centers on Lake Ontario and the Lower Mainland in Canada have always attracted cross-border shopping into the United States, and as Black Friday became more popular in the US, Canadians often flocked over the border because of their lower prices and a stronger Canadian dollar. After 2001, many were traveling for the deals across the border. Starting in 2008 and 2009, due to the parity of the Canadian dollar compared with the American dollar, several major Canadian retailers ran Black Friday deals of their own to discourage shoppers from leaving Canada.

The year 2012 saw the biggest Black Friday to date in Canada, as Canadian retailers embraced it in an attempt to keep shoppers from travelling across the border.

Before the advent of Black Friday in Canada, the most comparable holiday was Boxing Day in terms of retailer impact and consumerism.

In Mexico, Black Friday was the inspiration for the government and retailing industry to create an annual week-end of discounts and extended credit terms, El Buen Fin, meaning "the good weekend" in Spanish. El Buen Fin has been in existence since 2011 and takes place on November in the week-end prior to the Monday in which the Mexican Revolution holiday is pushed from its original date of November 20, as a result of the measure taken by the government of pushing certain holidays to the Monday of their week in order to avoid the workers and students to make a "larger" week-end (for example, not attending in a Friday after a Thursday holiday, thus making a four-day week-end). On this week-end, major retailers extend their store hours and offer special promotions, including extended credit terms and price promotions.

Black Friday is not an official holiday in the United States, but California and some other states observe "The Day After Thanksgiving" as a holiday for state government employees and Nevada observes Family Day. It is sometimes observed in lieu of another federal holiday, such as Columbus Day. Many non-retail employees and schools have both Thanksgiving and the following Friday off. Along with the following regular week-end, this makes Black Friday weekend a four-day weekend, which is said to increase the number of potential shoppers.

The SouthPark neighborhood of Charlotte, North Carolina, is the most trafficked area of the United States on Black Friday.

Oceania

In Australia, the term is controversial, as prior to its popularisation as a shopping day, it referred not to shopping at all, but to the devastating Black Friday bushfires that occurred in Victoria 1938–39. It was not until the 2010s that it was heavily promoted as a shopping day in Australia by in-store and online retailers, despite backlash and confusion by consumers. In 2011, Online Shopping USA hosted an event on Twitter. Twitter users had to use the hashtag #osublackfriday, which allowed them to follow along and tweet their favourite deals and discounts from stores. In 2013, Apple extended its Black Friday deals to Australia. Purchasing online gave customers free shipping and free iTunes gift cards with every purchase. The deals were promoted on its website, reading "Official Apple Store – One day Apple shopping event Friday, November 29". Australia Post's ShopMate parcel-forwarding service allows Australian customers to purchase products with "Black Friday" deals from the US and get them shipped to Australia. ShopMate ran from 2014 to 2022. It closed in February 2022 amid controversy about shipping costs.

In addition to this service, numerous stores in the country run Black Friday promotions in-store and online throughout the country.

Black Friday started picking up in New Zealand around 2013. In 2015, major retailers such as The Warehouse, Noel Leeming and Harvey Norman offered Black Friday sales, and by 2018 were joined by Farmers, JB Hi-Fi, Briscoes and Rebel Sport. Paymark, which processes around 75% of New Zealand's electronic transactions, recorded $219 million NZD (US$151 million) of transactions on Black Friday 2017, up over 10% from the previous year.

Central and South America

2014 marked the introduction in Bolivia.

Black Friday has been increasingly adopted by stores in Brazil since 2010, although not without its share of inflated prices and other scams, especially in its earlier years, earning the nickname "Black Fraude" (Black Fraud) or also "Black Furadei", which comes from the slang word "furada", meaning a "jam" or tough situation, usually involving money. It is also common to hear Brazilian people say that prices on Brazilian Black Friday are "half of the double".

Black Friday was introduced in 2014.

Black Friday is known as Viernes Negro in Costa Rica.

In Panama, Black Friday was first celebrated in 2012, as a move by the government to attract local tourism to the country's capital city. During its first year, it was believed to have attracted an inflow of about 35,000 regional tourists according to the government's immigration census.

Violence

Despite frequent attempts to control the crowds of shoppers, minor injuries are common among the crowds, usually as a result of being pushed or thrown to the ground in small crowd crushes. While most injuries remain minor, serious injuries and even deliberate violence have taken place on some Black Fridays.

2008

In 2008, a crowd of approximately 2,000 shoppers in Valley Stream, New York, waited outside for the 05:00 opening of the local Walmart. When the doors were opened, the crowd pushed forward, breaking the door down, and 34-year-old employee Jdimytai Damour was trampled to death. The shoppers did not appear concerned with the victim's fate, expressing refusal to halt their charge when other employees attempted to intervene and help the injured employee, complaining that they had been waiting in the cold and were not willing to wait any longer. Shoppers had begun assembling as early as 21:00 the evening before. Even when police arrived and attempted to render aid to the injured man, shoppers continued to pour in, shoving and pushing the officers as they made their way into the store. Several other people incurred minor injuries, including a pregnant woman who had to be taken to the hospital. The incident may be the first case of a death occurring during Black Friday sales; according to the National Retail Federation, "We are not aware of any other circumstances where a retail employee has died working on the day after Thanksgiving."

On the same day, two people were fatally shot during an altercation at a Toys "R" Us in Palm Desert, California.

2010

During Black Friday 2010, in Madison, Wisconsin, a woman was arrested outside of a Toys "R" Us store after cutting in line, and threatening to shoot other shoppers who tried to object. A Toys for Tots volunteer in Georgia was stabbed by a shoplifter. An Indianapolis woman was arrested after causing a disturbance by arguing with other Wal-Mart shoppers. She had been asked to leave the store, but refused.

A man was arrested at a Florida Walmart on drug and weapons charges after other shoppers waiting in line for the store to open noticed he was carrying a handgun and reported it to the police. He was discovered to also be carrying two knives and a pepper spray grenade. A man in Buffalo, New York, was trampled when doors opened at a Target store and unruly shoppers rushed in, in an episode reminiscent of the deadly 2008 Wal-Mart crowd crush.

2011

On Black Friday 2011, a woman at a Los Angeles Walmart used pepper spray on fellow shoppers, causing minor injuries to a reported 20 people who had been waiting hours for the store to open. The incident started as people waited in line for the newly discounted Xbox 360. A witness said a woman with two children in tow became upset with the way people were pushing in line. The witness said she pulled out pepper spray and sprayed the other people in line. Another account stated: "The store had brought out a crate of discounted Xbox 360s, and a crowd had formed to wait for the unwrapping, when the woman began spraying people 'in order to get an advantage,' according to the police. In an incident outside another Walmart store in San Leandro, California, one man was wounded after being shot following Black Friday shopping at about 1:45 a.m. In South Charleston, West Virginia, a 61-year-old pharmacist collapsed and died after suffering a heart attack at a store. The New York Daily News reported other shoppers did not stop to help the man, with some stepping over his collapsed body.

2012

On Black Friday 2012, two people were shot outside a Wal-Mart in Tallahassee, Florida, during a dispute over a parking space.

2013

On Black Friday in 2013, a person in Las Vegas who was carrying a big-screen TV home from a Target store on Thanksgiving was shot in the leg as he tried to wrestle the item back from a robber who had just stolen it from him at gunpoint. In Romeoville, Illinois, a police officer shot a suspected shoplifter driving a car that was dragging a fellow officer at a Kohl's department store. The suspect and the dragged officer were treated for shoulder injuries. Three people were arrested. In another situation, a 29-year-old shopper was arrested in a Walmart in New Jersey after arguing with a store manager about a TV and attacking an officer. He was charged with disorderly conduct, aggravated assault, and resisting arrest.

2014

In 2014, three buyers were arrested after a group of five people started fighting at a Kohl's store in Tustin, California. Two female victims were found with facial lacerations, and one of them was taken to hospital with minor injuries, while the other was released on scene. According to officials, three other females were suspects for the assault and were taken into custody. Two people were arrested after a brawl on Black Friday at a northwest side mall in Indianapolis. In Los Angeles, two women were fighting at a Walmart in Norwalk, California, over a Barbie doll on Thanksgiving night.

2015

Several people fighting at a mall in Florence, Kentucky, allegedly over a pair of Air Jordan sneakers. This year was called "The worst Black Friday brawls in history" at that time due to the heavy use of smartphones that could instantly capture video.

2016

In 2016, 21-year-old Demond Cottman was shot and killed around 01:00 Friday morning outside a Macy's store in New Jersey. The shooter fired multiple shots, leaving an SUV covered in bullet holes, but the motives remain unclear. Cottman's 26-year-old brother was also injured. A shooting at the Wolfchase Galleria Mall in Memphis, Tennessee, left one man injured. Derrick Blackburn, 19, was later arrested for unlawful possession of a weapon.

In Vancouver, a shirtless man attacked several people using his belt as a whip. The incident occurred outside an Adidas store where a crowd was awaiting the release of a rare shoe.

2018

At the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, Alabama, Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., was shot and killed by a security guard after two people were wounded in a shooting. On Saturday, the police announced that the shooter was not Bradford, but claimed he was involved in the shooting.

2019

A fight led to a shooting in the food court of the Destiny USA mall in Syracuse, New York. The mall went into lockdown until shoppers and staff were released starting at about 8:00 p.m. with all shopping activity suspended. 21-year-old Kyree Truax was arrested and charged with second-degree assault, second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, and second-degree reckless endangerment for shooting the victim twice in the leg.

2023

Three people were stabbed during a fight between two groups at the Market Mall in Calgary. Four people were arrested. Hours later, three others were injured after a stabbing at CrossIron Mills, another mall in Calgary.

2024

Two people were injured in a shooting at the Park Plaza Mall in Little Rock, Arkansas.

2025

Three people were shot following an argument outside of a Macy's store at the Westfield Valley Fair mall in San Jose, California.

Black Friday online

High traffic challenges for retailers

Some online stores invest a lot of money in promotional campaigns to generate more sales and drive traffic to their stores. However, they often forget about the high loads their sites are going to experience. According to Retail Gazette, "A number of major retailers' websites went down as they failed to cope with the surge in Black Friday traffic in 2017 ... This just highlights that some retailers have not taken the necessary steps to prepare for Black Friday. Failing to prepare for peak can cause poor performance, site downtime, and ultimately lost revenue for retailers". Such carelessness results in huge reputational damage. Moreover, the 2017 Veeam Availability Report in South Africa found that "Unplanned downtime costs organisations around the world an average of R270m annually, up from the R210m of the previous year".

Advertising tip sites

Some websites offer information about day-after-Thanksgiving specials up to a month in advance. The text listings of items and prices are usually accompanied by pictures of the actual ad circulars. These are either leaked by insiders or intentionally released by large retailers to give consumers insight and allow them time to plan.

In recent years, some retailers (including Walmart, Target, OfficeMax, Big Lots, and Staples) have claimed that the advertisements they send in advance of Black Friday and the prices included in those advertisements are copyrighted and are trade secrets. Some of these retailers have used the take-down system of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as a means to remove the offending price listings.

The benefit of threatening Internet sites with a DMCA-based lawsuit has proved tenuous at best. While some sites have complied with the requests, others have either ignored the threats or simply continued to post the information under the name of a similar-sounding fictional retailer. However, careful timing may mitigate the take-down notice. An Internet service provider in 2003 brought suit against Best Buy, Kohl's, and Target Corporation, arguing that the take-down notice provisions of the DMCA are unconstitutional. The court dismissed the case, ruling that only the third-party posters of the advertisements, and not the ISP itself, would have standing to sue the retailers.

Usage of Black Friday advertising tip sites and buying direct varies by state in the US, influenced in large part by differences in shipping costs and whether a state has a sales tax. However, in recent years, the convenience of online shopping has increased the number of cross-border shoppers seeking bargains from outside of the US, especially from Canada. Statistics Canada indicates that online cross-border shopping by Canadians has increased by about 300M a year since 2002. The complex nature of additional fees such as taxes, duties, and brokerage can make calculating the final cost of cross-border Black Friday deals difficult. Cross-border shopping solutions exist to mitigate the problem through estimation of the various cost involved.

In 2019, Adobe shopping data showed that around 39% of the shopping was done through smartphones. In 2022, 48% of online sales are made through smartphones, up from 44% in 2021. Meanwhile, consumers spent a record $9.12 billion shopping online during Black Friday this year.

Cyber Monday

The term Cyber Monday, a neologism invented in 2005 by the National Retail Federation's division Shop.org, refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday based on a trend that retailers began to recognize in 2003 and 2004. Retailers noticed that many consumers who were too busy to shop over the Thanksgiving week-end or did not find what they were looking for shopped for bargains online that Monday from home or work. In 2010, Hitwise reported:

Thanksgiving weekend offered a strong start, especially as Black Friday sales continued to grow in popularity. For the 2nd consecutive year, Black Friday was the highest day for retail traffic during the holiday season, followed by Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. The highest year-over-year increases in visits took place on Cyber Monday and Black Friday with a growth of 16% and 13%, respectively.

In 2013, Cyber Monday online sales grew by 18% over the previous year, hitting a record $1.73 billion, with an average order value of $128.

In 2014, Cyber Monday was the busiest day of the year with sales exceeding $2 billion in desktop online spending, up 17% from the previous year.

Cyber Week

As reported in the Forbes "Entrepreneurs" column on December 3, 2013: "Cyber Monday, the online counterpart to Black Friday, has been gaining unprecedented popularity – to the point where Cyber Sales are continuing on throughout the week." Peter Greenberg, travel editor for CBS News, further advises: "If you want a real deal on Black Friday, stay away from the mall. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are all part of Cyber Week ..."

Retail sales impact

The National Retail Federation releases figures on the sales for each Thanksgiving week-end. The Federation's definition of "Black Friday week-end" includes Thursday, Friday, Saturday and projected spending for Sunday. The survey estimates number of shoppers, not number of people.

The length of the shopping season is not the same across all years: the date for Black Friday varies between November 23 and 29, while Christmas Eve is fixed at December 24.