Sure, we all tend to think of money in terms of the color green. We use terms like greenbacks, or “show me the green”, among others, and it really is not our fault. I guess we could blame the federal government; after all they are the ones that print our dollar bills in green. We’re just reacting to the color that we see in our wallets every day. That course, assuming we’re not looking at one of our credit cards, which could be any number of colors, from red to black, including just about any other color in the rainbow. But in the precise world of accounting, especially when it comes to retail sales, there are only two colors that really matter. Naturally, green is welcomed, as when the register opens, and your hard-earned money slips into the drawer, in exchange for whatever item you bought. But for the guys in the back office, there are two other colors that are far more important: red and black. These relate to the two numbers that indicate whether a business is profitable, or not. It’s a simple as black and white. Excuse me, black and red. We’re really not going to delve into course in economics here, except to point out that red is bad, while black is good. Red means that the company is losing money, and something has to be done about that, pronto, whereas black means that the company is making a profit, in which case, hand out the cigars.
In the beginning, there was no Black Friday
For most consumers today, Black Friday is a ritual that they have become accustomed to, and in some cases, actually look forward to. But it wasn’t always this way. Up until about 60 years ago, there was an unwritten rule among retailers, that they wouldn’t start advertising Christmas sales until after Thanksgiving. This was meant to coincide with the traditional Thanksgiving Day parades, which actually go back a couple hundred years, the most famous of which is the Macy’s New York parade. Retailers respected this tradition, and agreed to not do any advertising for the Christmas holiday until the parades were over. But those barriers eventually broke down, and the race was on. Today, competing retailers push each other more and more, competing for that precious consumer dollar. It has come to the point where some stores are actually opening during the evening of Thanksgiving, which sounds slightly sacrilegious. But somehow, retailers have to turn that into black.
Elizabeth Kelley Harlepp is a US-based writer covering the latest trends in modern society. She writes on a freelance basis for many of the major blogs.
