Black Friday Brought a Few Brawls and Bruises, but Left Happy Businesses ... And One New $100-Billionaire

By Caleb Howe | 7:00 AM on November 25, 2017

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Black Friday has come and gone, and all things considered, it seems like the big day was good news for business and a good sign for the economy. Not without a few scuffles and hiccups along the way, of course.

A tough year for retail, they say, but on Friday that may have turned around as shoppers flooded stores for deep discounts and deals, sometimes even wrestling and fighting for them. There are no reports (at the time of this post) on exactly how well box stores and places that exist in the real, physical world fared, but anecdotally it looks good.

I was out there myself, and my battle scars tell me it was a good day. At least for the malls in Charlotte.

Via Drudge, this article from the Daily Mail lists a number of conflicts erupting, including the one in this video:

And this one, via Twitter:
https://twitter.com/vvega1008/status/934248119063203840

I’m no shopping scientist, but that does seem to indicate some level of interest, you know?

Online sales were really up, with Reuters’ last update putting internet retail on Black Friday at around three and a half billion dollars.

Black Friday online sales totaled at least $3.54 billion by 8 p.m. EST (0100 Saturday GMT), up 15.6 percent from a year ago, according to Adobe Analytics, which measures transactions at the largest 100 U.S. web retailers. On Thanksgiving Day, U.S. shoppers spent more than $2.87 billion online.

Those internet sales were of particular good news for Trump-nemesis Jeff Bezos, who’s wealth went up by $2.4 billion, putting him over the $100 billion dollar mark, thanks to a jump in share prices for Amazon. The last American to break that number was Bill Gates back in 1999, although he is now worth only about $90 billion, poor fellow. We’ll let you know when the GoFundMe drops.

Reuters reported there seemed to be fewer brawls and less packed parking lots, thought that is not what other outlets report or what some of us saw. In any case, analysts do expect this year’s Black Friday sales to be up over the last few years.

Like all news these days, that’s a mixed bag, but generally speaking, it seems like people have a little more wallet flexibility or security than last year, and that is a good thing. Both for the economy and Jeff Bezos.