The Delasol Group sincerely hopes you had a restful and replenishing Thanksgiving.
Now that we've eaten, we can loosen our belts (so to speak)! The two business days following turkey day are the shining stars of the yearly shopping cycle.
Black Friday (or African-American Friday, as Whoopi Goldberg put it) and Cyber Monday, while relatively new, are now permanent parts of the American lexicon. Wherever would we be without those irresistable sales??
This year, consumers left the credit at home and went in with cash and plastic of the debit kind. Delasol Group Founder Suneye Holmes was one of that number in the pre-dawn hours on Friday, November 25th:
It was incredibly efficient in Weatherford, Texas. I arrived at the local Best Buy at 3:30 a.m. Best Buy representatives circulated through the line with flyers for specific Black Friday items: tvs, Wiis, PCs, washers/dryers, et cetera. Each flyer beared a number that guaranteed the bearer a unit of the item, which was (presumably) in limited supply. At 6 a.m. the doors opened and shoppers with and without flyers were escorted through the doors to a barricaded walkway with "exits" at each major section of the store: computers, music, audio/visual, etc. At each post abbreviated queues formed where employees exchanged products for flyers and shoppers could check out immediately, withough traveling to the front of the store! I purchased a laptop and computer software and security for myself for less than $700 in less than 10 minutes. The laptop was just what I needed: high-end processing speed with a lightweight body and a webcam. I feel that I maximized both my time and my dollar!
This year, shoppers chose to use cash, check or debit over credit cards. 30% less than last year and the lowert percentage in the last twenty years!* The Delasol Group would like to congratulate and encourage the general public for executing sound economic transactions on the most important shopping day of the year! Borrow less and save more for life's events!
Cyber Monday is the next business day after Thanksgiving that encompasses online retail sales by consumers nationwide. Online sales on Monday, November 29th topped
$1 billion, the highest ever!! JCPenney's was a big winner this year. Black Friday sales, in comparison, were just under $650 billion, so selling your goods via the Internet in this day and age could prove most profitable. The economic outlook is to look into expanding your new or current product sales onto the World Wide Web!
Smart Shopping,
DLS
*
Reuters Online
