The term Black Friday was first associated with the financial crisis more than 150 years ago, and it wasn’t until six decades ago that it became associated with shopping, although retailers may have preferred the name Good Friday. When did Black Friday come to Europe? When were the biggest fights in American stores? What are the latest trends in the country where the holiday was born?

Financial origins more than a century ago

The term “Black Friday” was originally associated with the financial crisis, not with shopping. Over 150 years ago, two Wall Street bankers bought a lot of gold together, hoping that the market price for the precious metal would rise and they could sell it at a high price.

September 24, 1869 became a day that went down in the history of the American stock market as “Black Friday”, as the gold market crashed and many investors were bankrupted by two speculators.

In the days when American stores wrote their ledgers by hand, profits were written in black ink and losses in red. In general, many stores were “in the red” (in the red) for most of the year and went into the black (“went into the black”) after the Thanksgiving holiday, at the end of November, when customers bought many products at a discount.

In the early years of the 19th century, it was said that slaves were bought at sales around this time of year, but this is unlikely, and these rumors originated in the late 19th century, long after slavery had been abolished.

Thanksgiving – Thanksgiving is a legal holiday in the US, it’s a kind of “harvest day” and a day when people give thanks for all the good things that happened in the year that is almost over. In Europe, this day is best known for scenes from American movies where families have a celebratory dinner during which they carve a turkey (the Thanksgiving turkey).

Yes, for a long time the term Black Friday was associated with the end of November, but the connection with shopping appeared much later, seven decades ago. Originally, the term “Black Friday” was used for sad events or unpleasant situations, such as when employees were absent from work after Thanksgiving.

“Black” Friday for the police

In the 1950s, the police in Philadelphia called the day after Thanksgiving “Black Friday” because many tourists and many people who wanted to go shopping came to the city at that time, which was also the time of the highly anticipated American football game. football

For the police in Philadelphia, it was “Black Friday” because they did not have the opportunity to take time off, as the city was full of people, traffic was blocked, chaos reigned in many places and crime increased. It was a “black” day for them not only because they couldn’t take a vacation, but also because they had to work much longer shifts in order to somehow control the difficult situation in the city.

Black Friday and the first connections with shopping

It must be said that the idea of ​​extensive shopping in November was popular in the USA a century ago. For example, in 1924, Macy’s launched the famous “Thanksgiving Day Parade” in New York.

Department stores sold well in late November and into the 1930s, even though they were feeling the effects of the Great Depression, and in 1939, at the request of retailers, the US president moved Thanksgiving a week earlier.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt hoped that the economy would also benefit from increased sales and consumption, and the transition to this holiday in those years was popularly called “Frank Day” in honor of the president.

The phrase “Black Friday” caught on, but some retailers didn’t like the name “Black Friday” — and the negative connotation — and tried, unsuccessfully, to change the name to “Good Friday.” They did not succeed, and the name caught on and spread especially after 1970 throughout America, because retailers were competing with each other harder and harder and felt one thing: consumers will like an idea if it is well “packaged” with attractive marketing tactics.

The name “Black Friday” appeared in 1966 in the magazine “American Philatelist”, but at that time it was not a shopping holiday known throughout America. It was only after 1980 that BF became a shopping phenomenon in the US and people started flocking to the stores.

In 2008, a Wal-Mart employee was trampled by a mob that came to “hunt” for the best Black Friday deals on Long Island: $300 laptops and $99 GPS navigation systems. To prevent degeneration, the company in 2009 consulted crowd management experts, decided to keep almost all stores open 24 hours a day on these days, and employees had to make sure that people stood in lines and took products in turn, without pushing. or hit each other.

It must be said that there have been isolated cases of people going to the hospital due to the fact that they were crowded in stores on Black Friday.

A purely American “ritual of consumption”.

Black Friday is getting bigger every year in the US, with stores opening earlier and crowds getting bigger.

Black Friday is described as a purely American ritual “at the altar” of consumerism, a “social experience” for the family. In the best years, between 2005 and 2010, more than 130 million Americans are estimated to have visited brick-and-mortar stores on Black Friday, and at times the crowds were substantial. Back then, people were fighting over TVs, DVD players and home appliances, and Black Friday was presented as a “social shopping experience” in contrast to Cyber ​​Monday (born in 2005) and Amazon Prime Day (since 2015), which were days “solitary activity”.

Two big changes have marked America’s Black Friday over the past decade: online shopping has grown significantly, and Black Friday has become “Black November,” even more so because sales now stretch from mid-October to early December.

In 2015, some stores opened at 4 a.m. and from midnight, people with blankets could be seen in front of them waiting for the doors to open. A lot has changed since then, with much of America’s Black Friday now taking place online, and some are talking about “sale fatigue” as people are bombarded with discounts that retailers present as very deep.

And in the USA, Black Friday lasts for many weeks

A few years ago, the shopping “holiday” in the US consisted of five “intense” days (with “shopping madness”, as the Americans say), from Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, to Monday, Cyber ​​Monday. In recent years, in the US, what we are used to has also happened: Black Friday campaigns even span 5-7 weeks under different marketing names. This trend started more than ten years ago, and more and more companies are “joining” it.

In the USA, Black Friday can be as early as November 23 (as it was in 2018) and as late as November 29 (as it was in 2019 and will be in 2024).

This year, Black Friday in the US will be November 25, and Cyber ​​Monday will be November 28. In the U.S., campaigns are starting faster because research conducted by retailers showed that more customers began shopping for the winter holidays as early as the first decade of November. Sensing the profits, retailers came up with the most inventive campaigns.

One thing will remain the same: retailers will exert psychological pressure on shoppers by playing on their sensibilities when they are presented with discount “plates”, whether they are made of plastic or cardboard or on a computer, tablet or phone screen. . Common sense advice is to only buy what you need as much as possible and especially be clear about your maximum budget before you buy anything.

For many years, the American press published guides on how to “survive” Black Friday, that is, not to “fall” on the offers. For certain categories of goods, the lowest prices for the year fall in January, and for others – in March. For many items, the lowest price of the year is on a OTHER day than BF, but you should keep a close eye on the deals.

Another tip: don’t be attracted by the so-called “door busters”, really good deals that make you come to the store, but when you do, you see that these products are out of stock and you buy other things that are not yet available. t has been reduced too much.

When and how Black Friday came to Europe

American retailer Amazon organized an online Black Friday promotion for the UK in 2010, in 2011 small timid promotions were organized by retailers from several EU countries, including Romania, and in 2013 they were already dressed in both the US and stores from EU countries. , for example in Asda supermarkets in Great Britain.

In France or Germany, Black Friday really took off in 2014 and 2015, but unlike its beginnings in the US, in Europe it has reached much more online.

For example, in the UK, Black Friday sold £2.8 billion online and £4.7 billion offline in 2016, and £5.7 billion online and £1.7 billion offline in 2020.

For European Black Friday, the UK is the largest market with sales of over £7bn, followed by Germany with over €6bn, France with over €4bn and Italy with over €2bn. Other countries with high sales are Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium.

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