The real history behind Black Friday Sales
Big sellers from Amazon to Flipkart, Big Bazar to Spencer’s keep using the words ‘Black Friday Sale’ or ‘Black Friday Offer / Discount’. Most of us associate it with the weekend, taking it as a special shopping offer on Fridays to end the week on a happy note. But in that case, why is it a ‘black’ Friday? Sales events are supposed to make the customer happy, and black is simply not the colour for it. Let’s figure out this mystery today.
Immediate origin of the Black Friday Sale
Black Friday has come to India as a recent marketing concept from USA. In the US, it is always the Friday after the Thanksgiving festival, which is a big social-cultural family tradition there. Black Friday is the fourth Thursday in November. So, in 2021, it was November 26 and in 2022, it will be November 25. It marks the beginning of the winter festive and shopping season there. As a result, many Americans think that Black Friday comes from business terminology, where red signifies loss and black signifies profit, or regular income. But black Friday became a sales event in the USA in the 1980’s and it’s actual history goes further back.
Where did the term Black Friday come from?
Black Friday was a term also used for September 24, 1869, in US history. On that day, financier Jay Gould and railway businessman James Fisk attempted to usurp the trading rates in the gold market, resulting in panic buying and selling, leading to a disastrous market collapse. It was a black day when gold speculators managed to create financial panic for an entire nation. About 60 years later, on October 29, 1929, another stock market crash called Black Tuesday marked the beginning of a period of financial downturn in the US, referred to as the Great Depression.
Are there any other negative meanings of Black Friday?
In the US of the 1950s, factory managers started referring to the Friday after the Thanksgiving holiday as Black Friday. Large numbers of factory workers typically chose the day to falsely claim sick leave, affecting production and creating a business loss at the cost of extending the weekend holiday.
In the 1960’s, traffic police in Philadelphia used the same term for the same day again because they were forced to work 12 hour shifts in terrible traffic snarls. The annual Army-Navy football match for Philadelphia coincided with the date. The roads were clogged with holiday, shopping and spectator crowds, making it a very black day for the police on duty.
Interestingly, stores and sellers took up the term from factory owners and police, turned Black Friday into a happy sales event, and that is the meaning that is relevant even now.