Sizing Up Black Friday

Black Friday. Without knowing what this phrase means, the possibility for confusion is high. I recently did an unscientific survey, asking the question, "what is Black Friday?" Most seem to know it had to do with shopping and the holiday season, few, however, were familiar with the details. Here are a few responses:

* "It is the day sales clerks lose their sanity," spoken by a an employee at Wal-mart. Very possible, but I think it has a wider meaning than that.

* "It is the day retailers run out of the things you actually want to buy." Probably true too.

* My personal favorite, "it is the day comsumers go into the red in mass." Also probably true, but not quite there.

Black Friday is the day when most retail businesses finally enter the black. Hard to believe they can stay in business from January until late November without making a serious profit, but that's the case for many, if not most, retail businesses. Approximately half of all retail sales are between Thanksgiving and Christmas -- approximately a month. Therefore, the Friday after is very important.

So how did we do in 2006? Actually it takes a few weeks to get the hard numbers in, but if you look at the headlines of newspapers around the country, such as The Mercury News, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Washington Post, and many others, this will be a very profitable season indeed! Of course, in order to pass the muster the economy critics have developed of a successful holiday season, they will have to blow last years high numbers out of the water. That's just the way it is in our cynical world of business today.