Author: admin (Page 185 of 220)

I am no longer shy about admitting when I am wrong. Don’t like it any better, but it just seems easier these days to admit that some long-held beliefs were just assumptions.

Take Black Friday, for example.

When applied to shopping practices, Black Friday is the term used to describe the day after Thanksgiving, when retailers offer deep discounts and shoppers race in hordes to make purchases.

I have long believed that the often-reported media explanation for the term purported to have origins as the day merchant ledgers move from the red to the black – as a recent day chamber-of-commerce-type attempt to put a positive spin on a negative term.

I was wrong. It isn’t recent at all.

The positive turn on the “black” phrase started in the early 1980’s. A quick check in the newspapers database verified the Wikipedia article. The early references, dating back to the sixties and seventies and repeated as late as 1992, when AP Business Writer Joyce M. Rosenberg wrote that Black Friday is “an inside joke for retailers trying to serve so many customers at one time.”

The phrase originates from the crush of traffic and the overwhelming demand on retail merchants for that busy shopping day, which is often reported as the busiest of the year, but isn’t really. (Most years, that day is the Saturday before Christmas…)

As is the case with avalanches and runaway trains (something we don’t see much of around here), once a thing gets a head of steam, it is hard to shut down.

If the media writers would take a moment to think about the “in the black” business ledger spin, they’d realize that the huge sales produce diminished profits on popular items which are sold in hopes the buyers will pick up an item more profitable.

It takes business acumen year-round to stay in business, and any business that fails to make a profit until the day after Thanksgiving is certainly headed for trouble.