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Black Friday Starts Early

As most of you know the Friday after Thanksgiving in the retail world is known as Black Friday. Retailers around the country open their doors early, put on huge displays and have big sales. This is all done to entice the public to shop 'til we drop and spend big bucks in the run up to the holidays in December. I decided to take part in this annual ritual by waking early this morning (330am) and finding out just how many people line up before the doors open in order to take advantage of the sales.

First stop was Kohl's in Port Chester, NY which opened their doors at 4am:

There were about 50 people in line at 4am and by the time I took a few photos and walked into the store there were already people walking out with purchases. There were men, women and some kids (under age 10) enjoying the early morning hour at the store.

I walked out without buying anything (I was more interested in other people's shopping experience) and made my way to the heart of White Plains to get to a few stores that would be opening their doors at 5am. I parked in the big lot near the movie theaters and made my way to Wal Mart. On my way I passed the line for Circuit City:

There were at least 100 people outside of Circuit City all well behaved. I then made the 100 yard walk over to Wal Mart and was blown away. The line at 430am was already down Main Street and around the corner on North Broadway:

I asked some people near the front of the line (standing outside the store in about 35 degree temp) what time they arrived. 215am was there answer. Why I asked. Do it every year and want to get in on the early sales they replied. I then asked a few guards if I could take a few photos of the people at the very front of the line who were - luckily for them - inside and didn't have to withstand the chilly temps. They thought I was Press and let me in:

The 2 ladies at the very front arrived at 8pm the night before. WOW. The mood of those first 50 or so people in line was amazingly upbeat. When they saw I was taking pictures they cheered, gave a thumps up and asked for me to take their pictures. The excitement was contagious and it almost made me want to get in the back of that Wal Mart line and parade in with the rest of the locals. But...I chose against it.

One more drive around town (so much traffic it felt like a Saturday night in White Plains) and noticed a small line in front of Sears:

My Black Friday adventure finished I drove home and got back in bed by 5am. I'll do my holiday shopping online later this weekend!

Final thought. I'm not a betting man but based on my little bit of research this morning I would bet that of all the stores I went to this morning Wal Mart will have the most success during this holiday season. No doubt all retailers are going to struggle with the way the economy is heading right now but Wal Mart had 10X (or more) the number of people lined up compared to the others and the energy level was high. Consumers were generally excited to shop.

If you enjoyed a little shopping on Black Friday feel free to share your story.

TypePad For Journalists

I'm really proud of a project our company launched last week that speaks volumes about the power of blogs, community, the viral nature of our medium, and caring.  It's the TypePad For Journalist Program and gives recently laid-off journalists (or journalists who want to take control of their careers) a free TypePad account, promotion of their blog on Blogs.com (our blog portal), access to our services team, and acceptance into our advertising program (so the journalists can make a few bucks). 

The response to this program has been truly incredible.  We've received over 1400 blog mentions, 50 press mentions (NYT, LA Times, Wired, Yahoo!, etc.), 500 Twitter mentions and hundreds and hundreds of journalists applying to the program.  These writers have come from NYT, Newsweek, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Times of London and more.  Clearly this program has struck a very positive chord.

It makes me feel good that Six Apart is giving back to the community and helping people who have been negatively affected by the economic downturn.  I'm hoping we can expand the program to other industries that have been hit hard, too.  More to come.

Thanksgiving Blog...first post

Thanksgiving day.  A perfect time to start a new blog.  I've been thinking a lot about the type of blog to write over the past few months since I started my new job (full disclosure...I work for Six Apart, the leader in blogging software and services).  I've launched a few on VOX (one of Six Apart's social blogging platforms) and another on TypePad.  The VOX blogs are fun and light with one focused on family (pictures, comments, stories) and the other geared to tennis and a group of guys I play with on Wed nights.  The TypePad blog is about the good, bad and ugly of travel...pleasure and business. 

But...I didn't want to get bogged down on just one topic, one theme, when there is so much going on in the world today both online and offline.  I've been working in the online space since '96 (Excite.com) but also spent a number of years in magazine publsihing (Golf Mag, Travel & Leisure) so want to share my voice, my opinions on both new media & marketing and traditional media & marketing and things happening that affect all of our lives.  If it's read by 1 person or 1 thousand it doens't really matter.  But opinions are being created, shaped, formed and cemented on blogs today so this will be my shot to share my thoughts and maybe influence a few people along the way.

Finally...I'm sure you can all figure out where the title of my blog comes from (if not...Karate Kid is a big hint).  It seems to fit the theme perfectly.  My nickname is WAX and I'm focusing on topics both ONline and OFFline.  Get it?!

So climb aboard folks.  It's going to be a fun journey!