The inane spectacle known as black Friday is now over for this year. The ginned up spectacle of big savings to consumers seem slowly to be dawning on people as a just another scam by big business.
CNBC reports that the large stores were pretty full but with mostly young people who seemed more curious than they were shopping.
“I don’t think this is the target shopper that everybody’s looking for today,” said Deloitte’s Kate Ferrara, who arrived at South Shore Plaza in Braintree, Massachusetts, at 6 a.m .“People were shopping, but overall, it was pretty calm”. Steve Barr, with Price-waterhouse Coopers, said early indications are that in-store sales will be flat, with the big winners being online stores and shoppers. He questioned how stores that are offering 50 to 70 percent off this early in the season will be able to survive long term. “My concern would be for the long-term benefit of the retailers this just hasn’t been the holiday shopping weekend that they were hoping for,” he said.
In the interest of fairness I must confess that I am the operator of a small business which makes the big box stores my sworn enemy.
In an effort to create a level of parity chambers of commerce across the country have created small business Saturday as a way to get people to shop smaller main street businesses which have been the life-blood of America for hundreds of years.
Unfortunately for most small business operators like myself who appreciate the gesture it’s generally too little too late . By Saturday morning all of the money is already spent. Unfortunately for cities and communities small business-owners are unable to hire people because even though black Friday sales seemed flat shoppers are not flocking back to small stores, they are spend huge sums online.
Technically this reduces gross receipts to an even smaller group of really wealthy people as the proceeds are channeled to only a select group of people and creates returns nightmares for online shoppers.
Whether this is a coming to it’s senses by the shopping public is yet to be seen .
I personally doubt it but remain hopeful .
Even if small business people like myself do not reap any meaningful rewards from people coming to their senses it brings me some comfort if people stop making spectacles of themselves while the very rich fatten their wallets.