Black Friday in Canada Catches on With Retailers Importing US-Style Deals
Retailers in Canada Try to Stop Residents From Hopping Border to Shop Sales
Canadian retailers have steadily been incorporating U.S.-style Black Friday deals in an effort to pump up revenue and keep Canadians from making one-day trips across the border to get their hands on Black Friday offerings from U.S. stores.
This year saw the biggest increase among Canadian retailers looking to capitalize on the Black Friday frenzy, according to Reuters, with many retailers hoping to keep residents from streaming across the border to states like New York and Michigan spend their cash.
Although the sales were welcome, enthusiasm among Canadian shoppers was no comparison to that of U.S. shoppers, who are notorious for lining up hours, or even days, before stores open their doors for Black Friday.
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Reuters spoke with one woman, who was among 20 lined up outside Sephora at Toronto's Easton Center, who commented on the less-frenzied atmosphere among her fellow shoppers.
"Obviously, no one has been pepper sprayed or shot yet. It's our version of Black Friday," said Kaitie Rosen, referring to reports of a California woman allegedly pepper spraying others at a Walmart to ensure she got hold of coveted sale items.
In a separate incident, at a North Carolina Walmart, off-duty police officers providing security for the popular retailer, used pepper spray to break up what appeared to be a fight among customers, which turned out was not the case.
There have also been reports of two alleged armed robbers being shot in separate incidents in California and South Carolina outside Walmart stores, a Black Friday hotspot. Police officers were convinced the busy shopping day was the cause of the alleged crimes.
Although Canadian retailers were not explicitly referring to "Black Friday" in their sales advertisements (except for Walmart), there was no mistaking the meaning of the deep discounts offered by some businesses on the same day U.S. stores threw open their doors in the early morning hours with markedly lower prices on products.
Unlike their U.S. counterparts, Canadian retailers opened at modest times, with Reuters reporting that Sephora opened its doors at 6 a.m. and a handful of other stores opened at 8 a.m. It was noted that Best Buy opened its doors at 10 a.m., to the befuddlment of one woman who was seeking a laptop. The woman admitted that although the sales at home were "not even remotely close" to the sales offered in the U.S., it was not personally worth the time and money to cross the border.
Sally Ritchie, of the Retail Council of Canada, told The Canadian Press it was not a surprise for Canadian retailers to try and stave off the flood of cross-border shoppers seen every year.
However, according to Canadian broadcaster CBC, retailers should expect to lose one of every five shoppers to U.S. Black Friday sales and Cyber Monday discounts.
According to the Reuters report, Canadian retailers still have a few kinks to work out in their attempt to keep residents from taking their dollars elsewhere. One point of improvement, based on the report, is Cyber Monday deals, which has seen an increase in transactions, according to online payment service PayPal.
U.S. retailers look to the Black Friday shopping event as a way of upping their revenue and clearing store shelves and racks for 2012 items.
