By Hayley Ferguson

Shopping Season

Black Friday popularity continues to grow in Medicine Hat

Nov 29, 2019 | 6:01 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – Black Friday has officially beaten out Boxing Day as the top shopping day of the year.

According to a recent survey by the Retail Council of Canada, 43 per cent of Canadians said that they would be hitting the stores.

In comparison, just 34 per cent said that they expected to shop the day after Christmas.

Those numbers have been felt by stores in Medicine Hat.

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“Black Friday is a really large event actually. We have a lot of people coming through here, it’s one of the busiest times of the year. And Medicine Hat really comes out and supports us a lot when it comes to this,” said Warren Elms with Visions Electronics.

It’s not just the big stores that are feeling that shift.

Downtown businesses are seeing it as well.

“Not just boxing day. Regular Christmas sales have gone down. So people have adjusted their behaviour to shop for Midnight Madness, shop for Black Friday,” said Michael Harrington, the owner of Valhalla Pure Outfitters in Medicine Hat.

On average, a Canadian that shops on Black Friday will spend $792.

Harrington says that as a local business, he has mixed feelings on how the American holiday has created a shift in Canada.

“I’m surprised because it’s not a holiday for us. We’re not traveling, it’s not Thanksgiving. On the flip side, I’m not surprised because it’s going, it’s a discounted price before Christmas,” he continued. “And another flip side to that coin is you may not have got your gift card for Valhalla Pure yet. It’s really nebulous. It’s very confusing for Canadian retailers.”

For Elm, he says while most costumers are looking for holiday gifts, that isn’t the only reason people are coming in.

“One of the other things is people are just coming in to get the good deals. Something that maybe they’ve been waiting on all year long. That big TV purchase or even just a really good cell phone, stuff like that,” he explained.

Even with the deals happening in stores, retailers are expecting online sales to be even stronger.

“Where it will move the needle for us is online. So we have an online store where we take all 12 stores in the Valhalla kingdom, we dump all of our inventory online and then the supplier tells us what we can discount it by,” said Harrington. “Already this morning the online sales have been coming in. So the whole online weekend through Cyber Monday will probably be much bigger for me in Medicine Hat then in-store promotions.”

Even with almost half of Canadians planning to make a purchase this weekend, the country won’t even hit anywhere close to the states.

Already Americans have spent over $11 billion dollars in both stores and online.