By Ben Schwartz, Matzav.com
Black Friday, in American culture, is the great shopping holiday, the morning after the Thanksgiving holiday. Black Friday starts the holiday shopping season, and is so named because it begins the season that gets stores out of the red and into the black, hoping for a profitable year. Chain retailers create an event-like atmosphere, opening in the wee hours of the morning, and advertising drastic markdowns to pull customers in. Customers also make a holiday out of it, some bringing tents and camping out in parking lots until the doors open.
While Black Friday is associated mainly with nationwide chains and expensive electronics, this year it is a pivotal moment for another kind of retail store, one that is closer to home for the frum community: Your local Judaica store.
Retail business is feast or famine. Rarely can a store of any kind survive on the trickle of day to day customers. Stores rely on the frantic rush of the busy seasons, when customers pour in looking to spend money on what they need, and hopefully a few extras. But the busy season is limited; when you have three weeks to get back into the black, a few days of bad weather can keep customers home and a store in the red.
There are three big seasons for Judaica stores, all are before Yomim Tovim. The three times are the Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur/Succos rush, the Chanukah rush, and the Pesach rush. Each has its own little quirks. Beyond esrogim and Seder plates, stores sell many more novels before Pesach and Succos, which have long Yom Tov afternoons, than they do before Chanukah; not surprisingly, they sell more gift items during the Chanukah season.
This year, as always, Judaica companies are targeting the Chanukah season for a heavy marketing push.
The stores, meanwhile, scramble to receive and display the new inventory together with the menorahs and oil, while at the same time servicing crowds of customers. In this season, a busy day is strenuous and draining, a quiet day is frightening. While the ads and catalogs bring customers into the stores, it can be hard for stores to meet the advertised specials after paying for shipping, and putting together their own seasonal ads.
Like national retailers do on Black Friday, Judaica stores advertise loss leaders to get customers inside. Some stores feel pressure to match any advertised special, lest they be perceived as overpriced. Others don’t worry.
“I’m not overpriced,” one Flatbush manager says. “I always give twenty percent off the list price. If there’s a store that wants to pull people in, that’s fine, but if a customer is in my store, I’m already doing better than that, because he’s already here.”
This year, as Black Friday arrives tomorrow, many stores are already fully switched from the pre-Succos or early winter quiet season mode to the fifteen-kinds-of-disposable-menorah, fifty-new-book mode.
There’s enough new and noteworthy releases and developments at your local Judaica store to keep customers coming and to help gauge, like Black Friday, whether the recession is over. Hopefully, the weather will hold up, the stores will be bustling, and you will find just what you and your family need. But if not, hey, Pesach is sooner than you think.
{Matzav.com Newscenter}
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While I appreciate the plight of Judaica store owners – i think much of their usefulness is lost when applied to larger communities. Small out-of-town communities definitely need the variety store style judaica stores that carry the basics, but big metro areas don’t need the jewish mega marts that try and provide all while actually providing less (and of course the latest Jewish silver/wood inlay device of the moment). What we need are good Jewish Book stores that can focus and provide a wide array of seforim and books – without all the knickknacks. Tashmishei kedusha stores that sell the tzisis, talleysim, mezuzahs and seasonal products; the other stuff that these mega marts sell seem unnecessary, and a by product of the stores themselves, but that’s just me.
Families that overspend on Black Friday go from being in the Black to being in the Red!!!
I shop ONLY in my own neighborhood. I shop where I get the best price – Jewish owned or otherwise. It’s tough out there today. The days of ripping off the consumer are over. Should I have to open a store for a neighbor to ask me if I am in need of a hot meal?