For many Americans, this time of year is filled with family memories, food, and celebrating holidays.  But for over 74.5 million, this time is also associated with intense shopping for Christmas presents and overcrowded malls.

The day after Christmas, otherwise known as Black Friday, is typically a time where many Americans head to their local malls in search of door buster deals and savings.

Studies estimate that over 30% of an average retailer’s sales comes from the six-week time period from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

Although almost 100 million Americans are still choosing to shop on Black Friday, and now over Black Friday weekend, the number of Americans has been declining over the past few years.  In 2015, 102 million shopped over Black Friday weekend but when compared to the 2014 numbers (133.7 million), many people are choosing to not partake in the Black Friday festivities.

Black Friday, although still very popular, is no longer becoming the buzzy, attractive thing to do the day after Thanksgiving, as the popularity and willingness of Americans to brave the crowds for a deal declines.

So, why are sales and the number of Americans choosing to shop declining?  As many currently believe, the economy is doing much better than in previous years, so sales should be increasing.

Experts believe that one of the factors leading to the decline in Black Friday shoppers is the lack of credit card debt.  Many shoppers currently are using their own money, or cash, to spend on Black Friday consumption, rather than credit cards.

Also, many people throughout the country are still very concerned about the economic state of the United States, as people are still recovering from the recession and economic crisis of 2013.

Many also attribute the decline of shoppers to the increase in online shopping.  Many of the big-box consumers, like Target and Walmart, offer the same low price deals online.  This encourages many to stay home and avoid the crowds while still being able to save and get the deals that they are looking for.

In 2015, the National Retail Federation (NRF) reported that more Americans shopped online the three days after Thanksgiving than in stores.

While many large retailers look to Black Friday for a substantial portion of their sales, some stores, like REI have chosen to close down on Black Friday completely.  REI now encourages their customers to #OptOutside and pays all their employees time off for the day.

In an interview with Business Insider, REI CEO Jerry Strizke said that he wanted to make a statement against the trend of opening around a national holiday. “I was looking at the chaos of Black Friday and how more and more stores were opening on Thanksgiving and it just didn’t feel right.”

Although Stritzke might feel this way and take a stand against Black Friday shopping, no other retailers have made this move to shut down so far.  As shopping numbers decline, will other retailers decide this is a change to make as well?

http://www.businessinsider.com/rei-closed-on-black-friday-2016-11

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/12/economist-explains

https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-black-friday-3305710

 

 

Tuesday, November 8, 2016 was a significant day for the United States of America. Some man was elected president of our country, and the NFL passed its first post-election ratings test. This year, we have seen a nation where the National Football League and American politics have been intertwined like never before.

With Colin Kaepernick making his mark on national headlines each Monday morning due to his silent protests during the national anthem, the focus has shifted towards players protesting our newest President-elect. Many areas of the country seem to be unhappy with the results of the 2016 Presidential Election; however, people have decided to revert back to watching football on Sunday.

Week 10 marked the first set of games played after the election had been wrapped up. The overnight ratings were up after Sunday’s games. To put things into perspective, Game 5 of the 2016 World Series between the Cubs and the Indians amassed an overnight rating of 15.3 compared to 11.6 for the Sunday night matchup between the Cowboys and Saints. With the election over and baseball in the offseason, the Patriots versus the Seahawks drew a 14.3 rating, the best rating on S
unday Night Football since 2011. Of all the games this season, the afternoon game between the Cowboys and the Steelers drew a 17.8 rating setting the bar for the remainder of the season.
The NFL is all about ratings. As long as people are watching the games and stadiums are filling up, the NFL is making money. For example, it was announced earlier last week that the Patriots versus Jets game on November 27, 2016 has been flexed out of Sunday night and will be played during the late afternoon scheduling. The Kansas City Chiefs versus Denver Broncos game will be replacing the woeful Jets’ game with hopes of boosting ratings.

Although Week 10 looked great for viewers with a staple Seattle-New England matchup to finish the day, it is time to focus on what the following week will bring. If ratings continue to grow in this fashion, which is expected, you can assume these matchups will only get better. With playoffs around the corner, teams are fighting for their lives and the opportunity to hoist the Lombardi Trophy. This stiff competition drives fans to watch their favorite teams battle it out.

We still do not know the actual answer behind the spike in ratings for the most recent week of football, but we can assume that it had to do with the political debates and other championship games. Although the country is split between who they supported, people will look towards football Sunday as an escape and a way bring people of all races, genders, and ethnicities together under one roof. As a result, fans will continue to spend money and the NFL will continue to make money no matter who is President.

As November comes to a close, people are getting excited about what they have to look forward to in the coming month. Thanksgiving is quickly approaching, which means that Hanukkah and Christmas are right around the corner. Although the holidays are an exciting time for most, businesses are even more excited about the influx of cash they are going to make. Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving, is one of the most important retail days of the year for most businesses, with around 30% of annual retail sales occurring between Black Friday and Christmas. Therefore, it is important for businesses to strategically plan how they are going to approach the Black Friday holiday in order to maximize sales and further stimulate the economy.

In the U.S., Black Friday has been regarded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season since 1932. It is referred to as Black Friday because many retailers usually make enough sales on that day to put them in the black for the year, meaning that they will begin to turn a profit. In 2015, 74.2 million people shopped on Black Friday alone, which is lower than the number in past years ranging anywhere from 85 million in 2011 to 92 million in 2013. Although the number of consumers have decreased in recent years, 74.2 million shoppers still means large profits for these corporations.

Black Friday is known for kicking off holiday spending, however, the three-day Black Friday weekend is where businesses truly make their money. In 2014, 133.7 million people shopped over the weekend. Each one of these 133 million spent, on average, $380.95, which totals out to be around $51 billion dollars of consumer money that was poured into the economy. Investors examine Black Friday sales in order to examine the health of the retail industry. Since many economists believe that spending drives economic growth and activity, they will imply that if Black Friday spending is low the health of the economy is too.

As investors analyze the signals that Black Friday has on the direction of the market for the rest of the year, they tend to tailor their trades to reflect what they believe will be the future of Black Friday sales for that year. Whether the retail performance on Black Friday is good or bad, the results signal consumer confidence in the economy. According to research conducted by the National Retail Federation, 2016 holiday sales have the potential to increase by 3.6% and shoppers plan to spend approximately $655.8 billion.

To prepare for the three busiest retail days of the year, businesses are rearranging their stores, stocking up on merchandise, and hiring between 640,000 and 690,000 workers nationwide. This planning is necessary in order to compete with big-box retailers, like Wal-Mart, who brings in around $8.4 billion on Black Friday. Not only do this week’s upcoming sales have a powerful effect on the future of many businesses but more importantly, the sales should be thoroughly analyzed because the results are an accurate indicator of the health of our nation’s economy.

Sources:

http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/102714/how-stock-market-affected-thanksgiving-and-black-friday.asp

https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-black-friday-3305710

http://www.tradingacademy.com/lessons/article/does-black-friday-have-an-impact-on-the-stock-market/

The rise and fall of GoPro is a story other technology companies should be looking at when thinking about going public on the stock market. With an innovative company like GoPro, it seemed like a great next move and expand their business model, however, they might be regretting it now. Companies like GoPro and Twitter are having a hard time diversifying their products and gaining a consumer base, making it hard on investors to stay confident in their products. In its IPO filing in 2014, GoPro admitted that they depend on the sales of their products to capture profits for their company. Let this be a cautionary tale for those who want to become a publicly traded company or for those investing in a stock they may believe in.

Surfline.com

GoPro is an American company that produces versatile, portable high-definition cameras used for action videos and photography. In 2002, Nick Woodman founded the company after going on a surf trip to Australia and failing to capture quality action photos while surfing. As the company developed, so did the camera software and eventually, digital and video cameras were installed. GoPro made the decision to go public in order to become a larger media company and generate additional revenue from their camera products. On June 25, 2014, GoPro became a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ where their price per share was sold at $24. That day, they sold over 17.8 million shares of GoPro stock.

GoPro Official Website

Since their IPO, their share price quadrupled in the course of three months and things were on-track for success. On September 24, 2014 GoPro released their camera, Hero 4 causing their stocks and investor confidence to rise in the brand and their price per share jumped from 72.88 to 78.46. At its highest, GoPro was trading for $98.

However, some investors were soured when CEO Nick Woodman sold shares of GoPro stocks for his new charity, the Jill +Nicholas Woodman Foundation, and gave 5.8 million shares to their charity, causing the share price to decrease by seven percent. Although the shares were taken came directly from Woodman’s holdings, which was comprised of 52.4 million shares at the time of GoPro’s IPO, the company created more shares for the charity as well. This was especially alarming because GoPro’s lockup period expired in late November 2014. After the lockup ended, GoPro managers and directors can start selling shares, but not before then. This caused investor confidence to lower because they thought Woodman was signaling the stock’s high price was too extreme by selling off his shares in October.

Jump to two years later after a tumultuous year after becoming a publicly traded company, where their share price is around $10—quite a different company than two years prior. This fall from grace has happened because investors simply don’t like the stock and that’s because slumming sales. In 2015, their price fluctuated but had a sharp decline in July, where they plummeted to $60 per share. Because GoPro technically sells hardware, they cannot have a high operating margin, especially when their growth is expected to slow. GoPro is projected to generate $2.1 billion in 2017, when its actual revenue of 2015 was around $1.93 million—not a big increase year-over-year. 

Yahoo Finance

However, today with a share price of around $10, maybe some investors are too hard on GoPro and their sales, they may be able to turn it around. Although the company faces competition and is having a hard time expanding its consumer base, but people who have the product love it. GoPro now has a Karma drone in the works, which could life the company up. Everybody loves a comeback story and this is an opportunity for GoPro to reinvigorate stockholder confidence and gain a new segment of customers.

GoPro

 

 

The past Single’s Day (11/11/2016), the world’s biggest online shopping day of the year, has just finished with Chinese shoppers spending $17.8bn in 24 hours. That’s a bit short of the $20 billion some analysts had expected sales to reach but easily surpasses the previous record, last year’s $14.3 billion. But still, a lot.

Let’s look at another number. Shanghai Daily reports that the sales total blew past $1.5 billion, an 8% of the total volume in the first seven minutes of the event.

Singles Day laughs in the face of Black Friday. Last year on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, according to Adobe, American shoppers spent about $4.45 billion online (and $12 billion at brick and mortar shops). And that’s over the span of two days and counting all retailers, not just one site. Cyber Monday online sales, meanwhile, were just over $3 billion, according to CNBS.

(Source: Forbes)

Singles Day started as “anti-Valentine’s” celebration for single people in China back in the 1990s. Alibaba, the online retail giant, spotted the commercial opportunity in Singles Day back in 2009 and has encouraged single people to celebrate and buy presents for themselves since then. It takes place in China on November 11 every year.

 

This resulted in 467 million parcels being delivered after 710 million payments were made, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua.

（Source: Routers）

Ma Yun, the CEO of Alibaba is even more ambitious to promote Singles’ Day globally. Huge international companies are offering big discounts: Apple is offering certain models of its Beats earphone at 50% off, while Nike promotes 60% off on a wide range of shoes and clothes. Even Costco, the local brand of the States is joining this year.

In addition to steep discounts on the site, Alibaba has made an early start to promote the event to build the anticipation for the big day, already generating plenty of buzz from its celebrity line-up at the countdown gala in Shenzhen and an eight-hour fashion show in Shanghai which shoppers can pre-order items and pay later. To push for more sales, the Alibaba has introduced a virtual reality shopping experience and a stream of web broadcasts.

This year, the countdown gala featured appearances from retired NBA star Kobe Bryant, footballer David Beckham and his fashion designer wife Victoria, and U.S. pop band OneRepublic. Jack Ma, the founder of the Alibaba Group, showed up to perform a magic trick, and the new Alibaba Pictures’ film production was also promoted during the gala.

(Source: NPR)

“It’s not thinking about ourselves as an ordinary company. It’s about thinking of ourselves as an economy,” said Ma Yun. “You can use your device, your mobile phone, to connect to this economy to do global business.”

Undoubtedly, Singles’ Day is China’s largest shopping and advertising event, which is a barometer of China’s strong consumer sector. Singles Day reflects the changing shopping habits of China’s consumers. The mobile market is playing a major role. Mobile purchases accounted for 72% of purchases in 2015, up from 43% in 2014, according to the Atlantic.