Black Friday. It is the day, ostensibly, when American retailers get back into the black, but the term sometimes takes on a more ominous meaning.
At big box stores across the United States on the day after Thanksgiving, millions of bleary-eyed shoppers line up before dawn in a bid to get the best deals on the year鈥檚 must-have consumer goods. It can be a dangerous affair.
There is actually a website that has, since 2006, been keeping track of Black Friday鈥搑elated deaths (7) and injuries (98).
Increasingly, Canadian retailers have also jumped on the Black Friday bandwagon. Yorkton stores were no exception. There were no lineups, tramplings or even impoliteness in this city.
David Dungey, franchisee of Yorkton Canadian Tire, said for his store a lot of the insanity of Black Friday is limited by Canadian Tire鈥檚 鈥淩ed Thursday鈥� initiative.
鈥淵esterday [Thursday, November 26] was unequivocally our biggest day,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t was very successful.鈥�
Friday was also huge.
Dungey said he believes a lot more Canadians will be shopping at home this year because of the weak dollar.
That was certainly the case during back-to-school shopping in August. In fact, there was even some reverse-cross border shopping as Americans came north to take advantage of their strong greenback.
But, while Black Friday is gaining some ground in Canada and while pre-Christmas shopping is make-or-break for a lot of retailers, Boxing Day remains the much bigger deal this side of the 49th parallel.
