Black Friday is a staple of the holiday season. After Thanksgiving and devouring some delicious food, you go out hunting for the best deals at the mall and your favorite stores.

Due to the pandemic and the country’s guidelines of social distances and having a certain amount of customers allowed in the store at once, Black Friday seemed like the most impossible thing to do.

However, companies made the smart decision of making their sales in-store (and online) that way customers who didn’t feel comfortable going to stores could still have Black Friday deals from the comfort of their own home.

This was a very smart move and this year even with the pandemic Black Friday consumers in total spent over $9 billion which was a 21.9% rise compared to 2019 sales that made $189.6 million. Cyber Monday was also a success making $10.8 billion compared to 2019’s 7.8 billion

So you might be thinking yes, Black Friday was a success online. In-store shopping on the other hand has been decreasing in the last few years which has led to many small businesses struggling.

The percentage of in-store shopping dropped from last year’s 28% to this year’s 16% : however, it’s hard to tell if the decrease was because of COVID-19 or because of customer’s reports of there being better sales online.

Who Knows? I guess we’ll have to wait until next year to find out.