Why do we have Black Friday?
What caused the biggest shopping day of the year?
When you hear Black Friday you may well think of grand sales and massive savings to be made, but how did this retail holiday come to be?
Origin
Nowadays, the term Black Friday is used to refer to the first Friday after Thanksgiving, usually the fourth Friday of November. However, this was not always the case. For centuries “Black” has been used to refer to calamitous events and the days on which they occurred, it wasn’t until 1951 that the term began to refer to the Friday after Thanksgiving, but back then it was used to describe the day when factory workers would usually call in sick to have a long weekend. The phrase was used for a variety of other reasons up until the 1980s where it began to refer to the period of the year where merchants would make their year’s profit (black ink in the ledger), the rest of year they would be trading at a loss (red ink).
Global Adoption
The term and practice of huge sales continued to gain steam and eventually began to grow outside of the US as Global retailers needed to remain competitive.
For example in France in 2014, discounts of up to 85% were given by retailing giants such as Apple and Amazon. Retailers favour the American term "Black Friday" to "Vendredi noir" in their advertisements.
Sales on Black Friday last an entire week in Germany. The hours of operation for the stores remain the same during this sales period. Although products are available at lower prices, the price cuts are not much greater than weekly price reductions generally. The event was mostly used in the first years by online retailers to draw in new clients. However, physical establishments have already started to adjust to the shopping event.
Black Friday served as the basis for a yearly weekend of sales and favourable credit terms in Mexico. Since 2011, the weekend preceding Mexican Revolution Day, which is marked on the third Monday of November, has been known as El Buen Fin, or "the good weekend."
What is SOFTFLIX offering this Black Friday?
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