The Brilliant Birth of Black Friday Shopping

by Robin Fiedler

The Friday-after-Thanksgiving shopping ritual is now tightly embedded in our holiday happenings. But since when? Who started it? Can we point to one person and say, ah-ha, it's all your genius master plan?

It seems not. We could give indirect credit to Franklin Roosevelt who changed the official date of Thanksgiving in 1939 to improve retail sales. Wikipedia reports that "In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving forward by one week, believing that doing so would help bolster retail sales during one of the final years of the Great Depression." However, retail sales for the weekend after Thanksgiving didn't change significantly.

Most sources claim the term has a derogatory origin in the 1960's when Philadelphia department stores sales and promotions brought out such a large number of shoppers that traffic jams and jam-packed public transportation gave officials headaches. Martin L. Apfelbaum, Executive Vice President of Earl P.L. Apfelbaum, Inc. writes, "JANUARY 1966 - 'Black Friday' is the name which the Philadelphia Police Department has given to the Friday following Thanksgiving Day. It is not a term of endearment to them. 'Black Friday' officially opens the Christmas shopping season in Center City, and it usually brings massive traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks as the downtown stores are mobbed from opening to closing." The descriptor of Black had been used for describing stressful crises since the 19^th Century.

In the 80's, the term morphed into a positive connotation, referring instead to the retailers bottom line turning from red to black, losses to profits. In a 1981 Philadelphia Inquirer article, one retailer offers the profits theory "'Because it is a day retailers make profits -- black ink,' said Grace McFeeley of Cherry Hill Mall." For the most part though, retailers protested the 'black ink' connection.

More than one reference in The Philadelphia Inquirer in the 80's had retailers disowning the label, yet the media continued to proliferate the pejorative "Black Friday." In a 1985 article by Jennifer Lin, Joyce Mantyla, a spokeswoman for John Wanamaker is quoted: "The media may have dubbed the term, kind of tongue-in-cheek, because it is the toughest time to shop," Mantyla said. "And we've been inundated so much with it that we have come to accept it."

True to marketing saavy for retailers, by the 1990's, they embraced the term and even jousted for credit in birthing or at least perfecting "Black Friday" strategies. black-friday-etailers The twist was moving away from the traffic jam headaches impression to a true holiday shopping event using innovative promotions. In a 2008 Detroit News article, Jaclyn Trop claims that in 1981 "The notion of an early bird sale to kick off the holiday shopping season was born at J.L. Hudson's, when the department store unlocked its doors at 9 a.m. -- half an hour earlier than usual -- and held a one-hour 'doorbuster' sale." In Trop's article, Marx Layne part of Hudson Department store's marketing team in 1981 takes credit for the modern day version of "Black Friday" by inventing the strategy of opening earlier and offering discounted prices for only the first hour of business. Layne brags that the next year, K-mart, JcPenney, and Crowley's all followed his lead on Black Friday promotions. Trop concludes, "The competitive and secretive nature of promotions remains to this day." If we are to believe Trop, then Marx Layne of Hudson's was the genius who formulated the master plan.

Footnotes

Apfelbaum, Martin L. "Philadelphia's 'Black Friday.'" The American Philatelist. 79.4 (1966):239. The Linguist List. http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0804D&L=ADS-L&P=R5955&I=-3

"Franksgiving." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 7 Apr 2009, 19:48 UTC. 9 Oct 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Franksgiving&oldid=282405292>.

Lin, Jennifer. "Why the Name Black Friday? Uh...Well...," The Philadelphia Inquirer. 30 Nov. 1985: D08. The Linguist List. http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0804D&L=ADS-L&P=R7698&I=-3

"Shoppers Flood Stores for 'Black Friday'" The Philadelphia Inquirer. 28 Nov. 1981: B04. The Linguist List. http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0804D&L=ADS-L&P=R7698&I=-3

Trop, Jacklyn. "Credit Hudson's with Black Friday." The Detroit News. 26 Nov. 2008. University of Detroit Mercy. http://www.udmercy.edu/news_events/inthenews/2008/11-pdf/Credit%20Hudsons%20with%20Black%20Friday%20The%20Detroit%20News%20detnewscom.pdf