Selects: How Black Friday Works

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1:24and make real progress. That's right. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence, listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone. It's been quite a few years since we dusted off our classic episode on the insanity that is Black Friday. So we thought we'd put it out there for you again. I'm glad we made this episode when we did because Black Friday's nearly gone away since then. So we kind of inadvertently came up with a document on a fading cultural phenomenon.

2:02And I assume historians of the future will rely heavily on this. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this episode.

2:12Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.

2:22Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. And that makes this stuff you should know. You just checked to make sure Jerry was there. She's very quiet. You literally turned your head and body. Right. Yep, she's there. I did the Bigfoot thing, though. Like I had to turn the whole side of my body to look over my shoulder. That's how you know that was real footage. Well, typically when you know Jerry's here because you can just smell like miso soup or something emanating from our right side. Yeah. Or my right side. Your right side.

2:56But it's not emanating from you. It's coming from Jerry. Yeah. She stinks like miso. Which is actually a very pleasant smell. Salty and umami. That's right. So, Chuck. Yes. Have you ever been to a Black Friday sale? No. No. And I want to say H no. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, that's a decent qualifier, though, because it's not like an average sale. And if you don't go to a Black Friday sale, a pretty good reason why is because you're scared. Well, yeah, and I think this is one of those, a very divisive topic. You're probably either really into going or it's the last thing on earth you would rather do.

3:39I don't know. A lot of people are like, maybe I'll go check out a doorbuster at 3 a.m. I think there are people who do have that kind of idea, but maybe not at 3 a.m. Sure. It's almost like a multifaceted creature. Like it is for some people, like just in the middle of a normal shopping day on the Friday after Thanksgiving, they'll go to a store and it's fine and there's some sales or whatever. But then hours earlier, these hardcore people who had bathed in the blood of their fellow shoppers. Well, sadly, yeah. Yeah. We'll see. had already come through and gotten all the best deals. Yeah. And then there's those of us like us who are just like, I'm not going out.

4:20It is literally, and I'm not overstating this because people always say literally when they mean figuratively, but it's literally one of the last things I would ever, ever do in my life. Yeah. I can't think of many. I'd rather go to the DMV than go to a doorbuster. The DMV? Yeah. In between North Korea and South Korea? No, no, no, no. That's the DMZ. Right, okay. I always get those two confused. No, I'd rather go take the last ticket from the DMV and have to wait all day than go to a doorbuster sale. Yeah. No, don't blame you. All right. So we'll get to more hate spewing about this later. Right.

4:56And I should state my opinion. I feel like if this is your thing, that's awesome. Well, true, true. I'm not like cast Dispergence on people who disparaging remarks. Is Dispergence a word? No, it is now, though. So you're like your own American dictionary, the new Chuck dictionary. We should make that up. I like it. Yeah. We could add like five or six words already. Chuckisms. Yeah, agreed. I'm not saying like poo-pooing people who do it. If you're into it, great. As long as you conduct yourself in a reasonable manner and you don't turn into a monster like others do. Right. But there are obvious criticisms of the day too, which we'll get into.

5:31But I think first, Chuck, we should explain what the, as you would say, H, we're talking about to the people who listen to this podcast and don't live in the United States. Because Black Friday is pretty much a uniquely American experience. It is. I think most people probably know. But just very quickly, it is the day after Thanksgiving now in the United States is known as Black Friday. And we'll get into the pretty interesting history of it. But it's the biggest shopping day of the year. Right. And there are all these crazy specials that they run, and we'll get into that as well. But quite simply, it is the busiest shopping day of the year.

6:05Yes. The day after Thanksgiving. Right. And its origin, well, the origin of the term Black Friday goes back kind of a ways, apparently, to the mid-20th century. But the idea of going shopping, starting your Christmas shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, actually goes back to the late 19th century, early 20th century, thanks to department stores like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. And as a part of those parades, Santa Claus. It's no accident that it's a Macy's parade. Right, exactly. It's still a good parade, though. Have you ever been? No, I haven't. I've never been to the parade, but a couple of times, Emily and I have gone to the day before when they blow up the floats, which is really neat.

6:48Very cool. You mean I have a friend who's actually holding one of the floats, one of the balloons this year. Yeah, it's fun to do, although we did it like, eight or nine years ago, and it was really neat and sort of crowded, and then we did it a couple of years ago, and it is nuts now. Is it? Yeah, it's kind of gone overboard. Gotcha. The word got out. I think I saw something last year in the news. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a place to go if you don't like strollers. Let's just say that. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah. Strollers with all-terrain tires? Yeah. But the idea of starting your Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving came from those parades.

7:26and they came from those parades because all of those parades pretty much to a parade featured Santa Claus. Yeah, and usually at the end, kind of like bringing up the rear, and that means we're kicking it off. That's the official start of the holiday season. That's right. Santa Claus has made his first public appearance. So from the association of those two came going holiday shopping the day after Thanksgiving. That was in the late 19th century. in the 50s, they think, or early 60s. Well, the 50s, calling the day after Thanksgiving Black Friday came about, but it didn't necessarily have anything to do with shopping by then.

8:04It was from factory owners who apparently coined the term. Yeah, and there's also the other competing theory that it was the day that stores would go into the black, meaning start to show profit. Right. But that's not quite right, is it? No. That's a fallacy. That's actually a, well, it's a made-up fallacy to gloss over the original meaning of Black Friday. And it came out of Philadelphia in the 60s, and the cops and the bus drivers and the city workers who work downtown came up with calling that day Black Friday because apparently tons of out-of-towners would leave their homes on Thanksgiving, converge on Philadelphia to watch the Army-Navy game on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

8:47But they had a day to kill, so they all started doing their Christmas shopping because there were sales in downtown Philly every year. And the place would be nuts. And this was where Black Friday came from. Apparently, the police department wanted to basically keep people away. So they'd be like, well, you don't want to go to downtown Philly. It's Black Friday. And that was the original reason or origin of the term. Yeah, I see you saw in here an article from the AP in 1975. A sales manager at Gimbel's was quoted as saying, that's why bus drivers and cab drivers call today Black Friday. They think in terms of the headaches that it gives them.

9:27So I learned something new when I read this. Yeah, and then it spread out of Philly, and then years later the retail lobbies and retailers themselves said, we've got to come up with a better origin story for this because we want this to be a day that people want to get out of their house and go shopping, you know? But we should point out, even though it is not the day that companies go into the black, as it were, which, by the way, comes from when they did accounting by hand, you would write in red ink or black ink, depending on if you were ahead with money or behind. Red ink meant you were in the hole.

9:59Yeah. Black meant everything's good. Exactly. Even though it does not mean that, the holiday shopping season is when stores make up between 20 % and 40 % of their retail profits. It's a lot. Yeah, I mean, even Emily's small business, I don't know about majority, but a large percentage of her yearly sales are a couple of months. Yeah, and it's not just her. Apparently, in 2013, the National Retail Federation is predicting that Americans, just in November and December, Chuck, are you ready for this? Yeah. Americans are going to spend$602 billion in November and December. That's cray. That's a lot of cash.

10:43Yeah. In two months. Yeah, I don't spend like I used to on Christmas. Emily and I sometimes will spend on gifts on each other or do that couple thing where you go in and just do something nice for your house. And then like the adults on my side of the family, we don't exchange gifts anymore. Just dirty looks? Yeah. You exchange dirty looks? No, like my brother and my sister will chip in usually and get my mom something kind of nice. Or offer her a service. Like last year we replaced her fireplace with like a gas fireplace. Nice. Or build her a garden fence or tile her kitchen, like something like that.

11:24Wow, your mom's got it. Yeah. She's on easy street is what you'd call that. Yeah. But Emily's family, they all still exchange gifts. So I still have my Christmas gift swapping Joan satisfied. Nice. You know? Yes. You get your Christmas present on. Yeah. Okay, Chuck. So the idea of shopping after Thanksgiving and then Black Friday, that day being called Black Friday, it's been around for a while. And it's a really valuable day. Yeah. You know, it kicks off that two-month period where$602 billion is going to be spent on stuff. But it was created. Like Valentine's Day, it was literally created, and then the myth kind of became reality just because they said, everyone's going to shop today, it's the busiest day, and it became that.

12:12Yeah, it wasn't until 2004. Usually the Saturday before Christmas was actually the busiest shopping day of the year. Thanks to me. But the Retail Federation and all the retailers were like, well, we can't tout that as the busiest shopping day of the year. We want to get people spending over the course of a couple months, not the Saturday before Christmas. So they basically said Black Friday's the day. And like you said, it just kind of became true just from people saying it over time. I'm surprised that they haven't come up with a catchy name for Procrastinator's Day or something to pump up that last Saturday again or something.

12:53Or to keep you from it. So they call it Shame of the Nation Day. something like that to make you like go do Black Friday and not wait until Saturday yeah so and there's this website called blackfridayarchive.com it's actually like kind of cool if you like nostalgic ads or whatever nostalgia going back to 2007 I should say but it's just like scans of Black Friday print ads from those years which are kind of neat if you're totally bored out of your mind go check out blackfridayarchive.com

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16:10so black friday became a smashing success like 2004 2005 it's a relatively recent thing that it became what it is today here in the states which is an out of control juggernaut shopping and consumeristic frenzy, right? So it was so successful overnight that the retailer said, well, let's figure out ways to extend this whole week. So they came up with Cyber Monday in 2005. Yeah, that's pretty recent. And it is the online shopping version of Black Friday, the Monday after Thanksgiving. And that was another thing they just made up, another self-fulfilling myth that they said The workers go back to their computer after Thanksgiving on Monday, and they do all of their online shopping.

16:59Well, that wasn't really true, but now it is because the retailer said it was, and the media reported it. And not to be outdone, in 2010, American Express invented Small Business Saturday, which is when you go out and support small businesses with your money. Especially ones that take American Express. Exactly. So it's interesting. They're literally creating days to tell people, basically, if you're not shopping today, you're missing out on really good deals. Right, exactly. And the more days, the better, as far as retailers are concerned. But there's only so many days after Thanksgiving. So they started to think recently, like, well, what if we pushed in the other direction?

17:43Rather from Friday on, what's behind Friday? Oh, yeah, Thanksgiving. We can't touch that. For shame. Well, starting in 2012, they started touching it. Walmart actually opened at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving in 2012. And there was a general strike called that we'll talk about later because of that. Because these stores are not supposed to be open on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is its own day. It's a day of being with family and celebrating. Giving thanks. Up until 2012, it was sacrosanct. Yeah, this year Macy's and JCPenney for the first time are opening on Thanksgiving. And Sears and Toys R Us as well on Thanksgiving evening.

18:25And Kmart is opening at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving, basically extending Black Friday through the weekend. 41 hours. That's not a day. That's how long Kmart's going to be open. Black Friday at Kmart lasts 41 hours. Yeah. That's pretty crazy. And at shopping malls, you're going to have some smaller stores doing the same thing. An estimated 20 % to 25 % will be open at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, and two-thirds will open at midnight. So essentially what's happening is Thanksgiving evening is being ruined by retail. Yeah. You know? Yeah, I think the retailers would say, well, you know, we've seen that people start lining up.

19:12Thanksgiving afternoon, Thanksgiving evening, to wait for us to open like that, you know, the next morning. So why don't we just open? So, I mean, I think it's kind of, it goes both ways, but I pretty much see where you're coming from. Yeah. Well, this year it's a little trickier too, because Thanksgiving comes on November 28th, which is the latest has been in 11 years. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. 2002? Yeah. So, weirdly because they still sort of have to enforce black friday they're actually shortening their own shopping season a little bit this year right which is probably why some of them are opening on thanksgiving that's exactly why it's six days shorter than usual this year um so just by the very existence by making up black friday they've screwed themselves this year a little bit they have by a week yeah because there's um in other countries like canada the uk the netherlands countries that observe the Christmas holidays like we do in America, meaning everybody gives everybody else presents and things like that, and they spend money.

20:18But those countries don't have a Black Friday, a day that officially kicks off the holiday shopping season. Those countries spend more over the course of the holiday season because they have a longer period of time to shop. So without Black Friday, in America, the retailers would possibly make more money. So they've definitely painted themselves into a corner by making Black Friday such a thing. And this year, it's really kind of pointing out like, we may be shooting ourselves in the foot here. So what can we do? Well, their solution has been, well, we'll just take over Thanksgiving too. But that's not necessarily sustainable.

20:54And there's a lot of people who are saying Black Friday is going to go the way of the dinosaur. Yeah, I read an interesting article in the New Yorker this morning, a finance article. I think it was New Yorker. It might've been New York Times. But this financial analyst was basically analyzing how the sales go and sort of saying that it's really not financially the smartest approach to take. For the shoppers or the retailers? For the retailers to offer these huge deep discounts and sort of blow it out in one day. A better, smarter financial approach would be to elongate the shopping season and not even discount things, maybe even raise prices.

21:34and his contention is that they're shooting themselves in the foot. Right. I think he's right. Yeah, he probably is. But at the same time, if you're one of those people like me, frankly, who went to the mall the day after Halloween and saw that the lights were up, the garland was out, Santa's workshop was ready to go. After Halloween? November 1st, the place was totally decked out for Christmas with Christmas carols piping through. Yeah, see, that's ridiculous. But see, that was the great thing about Black Friday. It's like you had a month of just kind of chilling out everything, getting ready between Halloween and Thanksgiving.

22:13Then you had Thanksgiving, and then the holiday season started. Without Black Friday, it's kind of like this dam that's holding back the holiday season from spilling into basically October. But with retailers figuring out that it's an impedance to them making money, it probably won't start the official season any longer. It'll probably be further back from now on. Yeah. Well, I think we're in, I don't know about, well, technically slightly in the minority. In 2013, 53 % of the population of American adults said they will shop on Black Friday. 53 %? Yeah, that puts us in the minority by a bit. Yeah.

22:53And in 2011, 152 Americans shopped. 152 million. Oh, yeah. Just 150. But they spent$500 billion. Yeah, 152 really rich Americans. 152 million shopped on that day for an average of three hours at a time, which is not too long. I mean, three hours is like all way to you out. It's longer than I want to shop ever. I saw a woman who did 16, though, like a 16-hour stretch of shopping. She better have gotten it all done at least. I hope so. You know? Yeah. Like if she shopped for 16 hours and only got like three gifts, it's not time well spent. There's also evidence that the internet is basically knocking on Black Friday's door.

23:39Thanksgiving Day is the fastest growing online shopping day. Yeah. And I think like 70 % of the people who said that they're going to shop on Black Friday said they'll do some or most of it online. So the internet's still there for retailers to make money. But the idea of Black Friday in-store sales going extinct is probably not going to happen because it's its own thing. Like there's this one consumer psychologist or consumer analyst, I think, pointed out that it's a tradition, number one. Now it is. And number two, there's a certain element of like sport to it. It's more than just getting a good deal.

24:21It's like throwing a fist at somebody while you get a good deal. There's something to it that transcends the whole thing. So we mentioned doorbusters. It's a central part of the cog that is Black Friday. And it goes back in print, believe it or not, to the year 1917 and anecdotally to 1895 wherein a retailer will basically say, you know what, we have one item, or usually it's a few now, but some really deep, deep and really super great deals on just a few select items. So like, for example, a good laptop for$180. Yes. And like deals like that, iPods for half off or a TV for like$200. Like really, really, like you said, very good discounts.

25:07But here's the deal. It's a scam, people. It's a bait-and-switch scheme. It's a bait-and-switch. They've only got a very limited amount of these select items, which is why the violence happens, which we'll get to in a minute. And then after that, they're hoping you get in there. You don't get that laptop, but you're like, screw it. I'm at Walmart at 5 a.m. I might as well buy some stuff regular priced or slightly discounted items. And, you know, that's how they get you in the store. That's how they get you. It is. And it's true that these items do exist, and they are for that deal. They're for that price, I should say.

25:49But there's only like 10. And in the fine print, it's like one per person, and that deal is for in stock only. Like you can't get a rain check or anything like that. No, no, no. But the concept that these deals do exist for those items that are in the store, coupled with whoever physically gets their hands on that item first gets that deal. Yeah. Leads to doors actually being busted. It's called recipe for disaster. Yeah. All right. So before we get to the dark days and the bad stuff that can happen truly, let's do a little message break. Okay.