Today is "Black Friday", the biggest shopping day of the year in the US. Stores advertise extraordinary "door crasher" bargains to lure the shoppers in on the day after Thanksgiving, and the citizenry responds with enthusiastic abandon -- and not a little greed. There are stories today of people buying carts full of cheap TVs, with the intention of keeping just one and punting out the rest for profit on eBay. The whole exercise will be watched even more closely than usual by economists and analysts, amid fears that the looming "fiscal cliff" may already be causing people to tighten their purse strings. It has to be said, based on the televised scenes of mayhem from New York City, that there's not much evidence of that happening.
The "Black Friday" phenomenon is starting to spread outside the US, and nowhere is this more evident than in this part of Ontario, even though this is not a major holiday here. (Canadian Thanksgiving took place weeks ago, more or less in the middle of the harvest season that we are supposedly giving thanks for). Shopping in the US, or "across the river" in the local parlance, has long been a way of life, and with four border crossings within less than half an hour's drive, the opportunities to stock up on eggs at a buck a dozen are never far away. As the Canadian dollar has steadily strengthened against the US dollar in recent years, the pressure on retailers in Ontario, and especially in the Niagara region, has been ratcheting higher.
Wonder of wonders, the local retailers are fighting back in kind. "Black Friday" deals started to appear here at least a week ago, presumably on the principle that if you can get people to max out their credit cards early enough, they won't have any firepower left to head over to Buffalo by the time the big day itself arrives. The stack of store flyers deposited in our driveway this week, along with the free newspapers, was even thicker than usual.
For all the flyers and the price cuts, the retailers must have been holding their breath this morning. An informal survey in one of the Toronto papers suggested that 40% of people in southern Ontario were planning to take advantage of Black Fridays deals in the US. This seems improbably high, even though it's customary to note that Canadians are "much more value-conscious" than American shoppers, which is a polite way of saying that they're cheapskates. Interestingly, though, the local news reports at 9 this morning suggested that there were no undue lines at the border crossings this morning, when past Black Fridays have seen waits of up to 2 1/2 hours for those trying to get into the States. So maybe the deals on this side of the border have had the desired effect, which can only be a good thing, particularly if it induces Canadian retailers to maintain competitive prices all year round.
Me, I'm staying away from stores on both sides of the border today. I learned a long time ago that if you buy a TV that's regularly $799 for $299, you haven't saved $500. You've spent $299. The only way to save money is not to spend it. And anyway, I've no appetite for lying about how much I've spent to the nice people at Canada Customs when I come back across the border . So no Black Friday for me. Cyber Monday though -- now that may be a more appealing proposition.
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