What’s The Real History Of Black Friday?

Generally, Black Friday is not that gloomy as you might surmise from its name! On the contrary, this is one of the brightest moments of the year for almost everyone – both buyers and sellers. For some of them it is an opportunity to buy an expensive and long-desired thing. For others – a great chance to earn some extra money.

And for all of them this is a really mind-blowing event!

Why is this event called “Black Friday”? And how did this good tradition start? Look for answers in this post!

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Black Friday: origin

People started arranging big sales on this day as far as in the XIX century, but Black Friday received its official name much later.

Franklin Woolworth (1852 -1919) is considered to be the person who organized the first sale in 1873 in the small city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

The expression «Black Friday» in its modern connotation was launched by Philadelphia road police. For local law enforcement officers the last Friday in November turned into hell as all the motorists in the city were stuck in traffic jams all day because of people rushing to buy gifts, and then they were stuck again the whole evening because of the traditional football game between the Army and the Navy.

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Further Events in the History of Black Friday

This day became known as Black Friday among the owners of large enterprises because after Thanksgiving many employees often requested some time giving fictitious excuses to catch the sales.

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In 80th shopkeepers introduced a later extremely popular tradition of «door-busters» – special offers for the early visitors. The outlets were opened at 6 am, making temporary discounts for selected goods: buyers rushed into the room in search of bargains and indiscriminately swept away everything. The early morning was the prime time for catching the best Black Friday deals!

The name “Black Friday” is partly borrowed from accounting, where the black ink indicated profit, and red – expenses.

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Our days

In the past few decades the Black Friday became favorite subject for market promotion. The stores in the United States and other countries offer a minimum price for most goods and completely clean their shelves in just a few hours, remaining “in the black” because of the amount of product sold, rather than benefiting from high prices.

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The features of Black Friday in different countries

Well, in the United States the discounts are truly sky-high!

In Europe, sales are organized less frequently on this day, and some stores do not hold the pre-Christmas sales. Here it is more like a marketing trick. Sales in European shops and online stores start 2 weeks before Christmas.

Chinese shops offer sales in honor of any holiday, so they promise grandiose sales for Black Friday! However, in reality, the Chinese sellers advertise huge discounts to almost 90% on their home page, but in the end it turns out to be just ordinary store advertising and nothing more. In fact, the prices are cut significantly but only after they have been artificially increased in advance.

As for Russia and Ukraine, the word “sales” is deliberately used with quotation marks, because most of these sales there are held according to the Chinese pattern.

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