Black Friday and Cyber Monday: Stay Calm - Don't PANIC!

The term "Black Friday" may have originated in Philadelphia, where it was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. More recently, merchants and the media have used it instead to refer to the beginning of the period in which retailers go from being in the red (i.e., posting a loss on the books) to being in the black, (i.e., turning a profit) yeah!

 
Cyber Monday, on the other hand, is a marketing term for the Monday immediately following Black Friday; the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States. The term made its debut in 2005 in a Shop.org press release entitled "'Cyber Monday' Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year".  Here are a few fun and not so fun facts.

According to The National Retail Federation, shoppers spent $11.4 billion on Black Friday in 2011, and total spending over the four-day weekend following Thanksgiving reached a record $52.4 billion, which was up 16% from $45 billion the year before.  A record 226 million consumers shopped in stores and online between Thursday and Sunday, up from 212 million in 2010.  Individual shoppers spent more too, the NRF said, with the average holiday shopper shelling out $398.62 this weekend alone, which was up from $365.34 in 2010.  (Sources: moneycnn.com, shine.yahoo.com)

As most who have ever ventured out to participate in this annual ritual are likely aware, crowds abound, and people can get a bit carried away at times.  One 2011 Black Friday incident included a woman who injured 20 people at a Walmart in California while clearing her way to an X-Box display using pepper spray.  However, there are happy stories as well.  According to the New York Daily News, two individuals have Black Friday to thank for their unique love-at-first-sight story. The two lovebirds struck up conversation while standing in line at a Long Island Kmart. The small talk turned into sweet talk as the two waited in line together for a total of seven hours before doors opened. Fast forward a few years, and the couple is happily married with fond memories of the day they met.

Pretty crazy stuff. For us, at B2BGateway.Net, it’s a little less hectic, a lot more controlled. We see an enormous amount of EDI traffic on both days but we’re way more relaxed than the shoppers out there losing their minds and pepper spraying babies for video games. See, we prepare well in advance of the ensuing madness by adding and deploying virtualized servers for increased process handling. We’re seriously ready for anything. So, shop all you want and we’ll monitor the action far away from the choas. If by chance you’d like to learn a little more about our robust technical architecture, check us out. http://www.b2bgateway.net/technical_architecture.asp

Happy Holidays,

-Brian Alty