Black is Back and Brim’s Here to Sort It: Michael Brim, Head Honcho of BFAds.net Talks Black Friday, Buys and Sales Tag Whys
In the early 2000s, Michael Brim put together the ads from various retailers for Black Friday on his personal website. At first, his compilation was shared with friends and then their friends. The rest is history. Mr. Brim is the founder and head of www.BFAds.net. It is arguably the leading Black Friday information site on the net, giving up to date information on all the Black Friday ads from in store retailers as well as online, discount specials that various retailers are having and many other information tools to help you organize your Black Friday.
Listen to the entire Michael Brim CYInterview:
(Backup Player: Including IE)
Michael Brim joined me for a CYInterview covering Black Friday information and tips. You can read the excerpts or listen to the entire CYInterview below:
When it comes to the number one tip for Black Friday shopping, Michael Brim says the following:
“The biggest tip is if you don’t want to wait in line for four or five hours just to get in the store and then basically chance any opportunity that you have of getting items, a lot of stores have embraced online black Friday sales and to not really compete with themselves, a lot of stores put these black Friday sales online starting as early as Wednesday night and then most of them are usually live Thanksgiving Day morning.
So it’s almost like a second chance to shop and it’s a great way to knock out a lot of items that might be on your shopping list. So that if there are any items that aren’t available online and are in store only, you can really focus on those when you get to the store having already bought all your stuff, all your items online.”
Michael says you can get the majority of the items you want from Black Friday shopping online today. However, there is always the concern that retailers will oversell items online and not be enough for every buyer.
“That’s obviously one of the little catches of shopping online is really a wait and see process for a lot of retailers is that you’re working on blind faith and that you hope that they’ll have most of the things out. In general I would say, with the exception of the top five or so door busters and obviously it depends, the door busters are usually in store only unless they’re explicitly marketed as online and in store…But then the rest of the ad generally is put online.”
Some retailers are opening up their stores on Thanksgiving Day [Thursday] and not waiting for Black Friday. There were many potential consumers who were not happy that certain stores were opening on a holiday they spend with their family. Michael says the reaction he’s heard from his site has been mixed.
“There’s a lot of people that obviously disagree with the decision, but we’ve also received a lot of responses that for some people it’s they don’t have to wait an additional four hours for the sales to start. So it’s weird. It’s a pretty split decision…In general, I don’t think people are lining up that much earlier.”
Finally, for those families in America who are enduring tough economic times and have less income to spend, Mr. Brim tells us what retailers have done to make things more affordable for those financially crunched families.
“I think over the past couples of years is that the economy hasn’t been favorable by anyone and so the past couple of years you’ve seen retailers kinda avoid the big loss leading items, the ones where they’re obviously taking a loss on and really just discounting more items at a greater discount as opposed to having three or four items that are deeply discounted and then the rest not so great. You’re just seeing more of an overall discount. And I think that’s good.
This year is a little bit kind of a flashback to the early 2000s…I think one of the big things is that for a lot of families is that they’re not, especially the ones that are in financial crunches, they’re not necessarily gonna have the time go out 24 hours in advance to really secure a door buster. So I think a lot of retailers have acknowledged that and by putting some of their door busters online and a lot of their Black Friday sales online, they’re opening up another chance, an opportunity for people to engage and participate in Black Friday shopping.”
Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
You can find Michael’s site BFAds at http://www.BFAds.net.
You can email Chris Yandek at ChrisYandek@CYInterview.com
One Reply to “Black is Back and Brim’s Here to Sort It: Michael Brim, Head Honcho of BFAds.net Talks Black Friday, Buys and Sales Tag Whys”
Comments are closed.