Black Friday Deals
All major retailers in Canada participate in Black Friday by offering a huge number of products at great discounts. Online retailers follow suit, with Amazon, Canadian Tire, Best Buy, Home Depot, and many smaller online-only businesses offering great Black Friday deals in Canada.
There’s some conflicting opinions on how the black friday sales in Canada could turn out. With inflation, rising costs of living and mortgage payments, some speculate that spending could be muted and shoppers might not click the ‘buy now’ button on as many items as last year. Retailers, however, have gone from supply chain issues to overstock, and some are hoping to clear out excess inventory with Canadian Black Friday deals.
There isn’t as much rush to head out on Friday as there once was. At first glance, the discounts don’t necessarily seem as large, but the length of sales have increased – giving shoppers more time to consider and compare deals before buying.
For example, Canadian Tire has started offering deals on Thursday, calling it ‘Red Thursday’. And that was after their 2 weeks of Christmas season sales.
If you missed Friday’s deals, don’t worry because Black Friday lasts longer than just a day. Cyber Monday also comes with great discount deals on top selling products. And typically these sales last as least a week.
History of Black Friday in Canada
Black Friday 2022 is on November 25. American Thanksgiving is on Thursday, November 25, and the biggest shopping day of the year in the USA is the day after Thanksgiving. It’s now commonly referred to as Black Friday.
Boxing Day is typically the biggest shopping day of the year in Canada, and that’s the day after Christmas when retailers would post huge discounts on top selling items to help pull people back into stores after the Christmas shopping season was over.
Around the year 2000, when the US dollar to Canadian Dollar exchange rate was so favorable for Canadians, many crossed the border to the USA to start shopping the Black Friday sales and get some items checked off their Christmas to-buy lists.
Canadian retailers noticed this, and wanted to keep that money in Canada, so they also started offering Black Friday deals in Canada.
In 2020, over 40% of Canadians surveyed said they were planning to shop on Black Friday, and only 32% saying they planned to go out and look for Boxing Day deals.
Why is it called Black Friday?
There are a few different reasons as to why the day after the USA Thanksgiving is called Black Friday.
Way back in the 1800s, two investors caused a stock market crash by driving up the price of gold. In 1869, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk managed to cause a 20% drop in the stock market. Foreign trade stopped, and farmers had a huge drop in corn and what value. The term “Black Friday” was used to describe this event.
Fast forward almost 100 years, and in the 1950s and 1960s, Philadelphians started using the term to refer to the day between Thanksgiving and the Army vs Navy football game. Massive crows of tourists and shoppers would descend on the city putting a massive strain on local law enforcement.
Retailers reinvented the term Black Friday in the late 1980s as a way to reference the way accountants use ‘black’ to refer to positive earnings. Black Friday became the day when stores finally turned a profit. And the rest is history!
Black friday shopping sales have evolved into Cyber Monday deals and basically a season-long shopping event all the way up until Christmas.
When is Black Friday 2024? In 2023, Black Friday was on November 23. In 2024, Black Friday is on November 29. And, of course, it’s always on a Friday!
