I spent over 20 years on the battlelines of “Black Friday” working in both small camera shops and big box electronics stores. I got out before it started creeping into Thanksgiving, thank goodness. Although the phrase “Black Friday” seems evil and sinister, it started as the terminology used by shop owners for the day they would actually start making money for the year. That’s right, many small retail shops don’t really start making money until the last month of the year. Out of the red and into the black.
Of course, these days, most of the big retailers have cash flows that allow them to be profitable year round but the small, independent shops still look to the day after Thanksgiving through Christmas as their bread and butter.
As an Arkansas-based business, the Arkansas Outside family asks that you support local businesses this holiday season and what better place to start than our own sponsors. Check out what’s going on at these shops throughout the weekend:
-
Arkansas Cycling & Fitness
-
The Community Bicyclist
-
Fayettechill
-
Go! Running
-
Ouachita Outdoor Outfitters
-
Spokes Little Rock – Where you can get Orbea Bikes locally.
-
You can also give the gift of health this year by signing up a loved one for a race at DLT Events.
As an added note, we wish we had shared the history of Black Friday with our merchandising staff here at AO. They assumed that it was a day for selling things that are black. So if you are interested in our stylish black AO Noggin Insulator (currently shipped with a free Recovery Beverage Insulator) or would like a whole set of black AO Recovery Beverage Insulators*, you can order them online (shipped from an Arkansas-based location for free).
*A note on the Recovery Beverage Insulators, they will no longer be available for free at events so if you have one or more of the free ones, we’d recommend putting them in a display case and holding on to them since it seems they’ve already gone up in value from $0 to $8.00 for 6 (warning: past growth is is not an indicator of future earnings). Let’s see you get that kind of growth from any other investment in your portfolio.
Have a great holiday season and find some time to get outside, or better yet, get your family outside. As our friends at Ouachita Outdoor Outfitters say, #doitwithalocal. More info on why shopping local is important below…
