All the media reports are breathlessly positive about the success of the Black Friday sales, nearly 10 percent higher than last year. But the media can never be trusted in matters economic, or anything else.
Notable that Black Friday sales data shows a 9.1% increase spend from last year.
But: -1% in total item volume from last year. Prices +7% higher. Consumers bought on average 4.1% fewer items.
And: An 11% increase on buy-now-pay-later use. Klarna specific use up 45% by volume since last year
Meaning: Roughly 11% of ALL Black Friday spending was financed through BNPL. And 84% of all purchases were financed by credit cards, where 67% of those consumers expect to not pay the full balance in the first month.
This is the sign of a weakening and stretched consumer.
There was no increase, just the combination of more debt and more inflation. It’s all a house of cards.
Now, the Castalia sale went very well, despite the fact that our prices were actually LOWER than they were a year ago. This, ironically, also points to economic contraction, because historically, books do best during periods of contraction and inflation since it’s a) cheaper to stay home than go out and b) books offer some of the highest value-per-dollar of any entertainment option.
I worked it out on last night’s Darkstream. The average individual reads at 238 words per minute. There are about 1.2 million words in the 10-volume set of the Junior Classics. It will therefore take around 84 hours to read through them once. At the retail price of $349.99, that’s a price of $4.16 per hour.
Compare that to the price of a ticket to a 90-minute movie, which is $16.08, or $10.72 per hour. Except you can, and you will, re-read the Junior Classics, and multiple people can read them. In a household with children, the cost per hour is probably around 65 cents. So, it makes sense that as the economy contracts and people find themselves staying at home more, they tend to read more and purchase more books.