Dear Friends,

We got a nice snowfall on Wednesday. The roads were greasy, so we really got our first taste of winter driving. We will have a white Thanksgiving here in the Green Mountains. While I don’t like winter very much, I have to say that the blanket of snow is very beautiful. I went bowling with the S. Burlington team this week, and while we had a great time, my curving bowling stroke was failing me. The retail teams in our three stores are all primed and ready for the big Black Friday sales day.

Black Friday has grown to be such a big sales day that the reason it is called Black Friday is sometimes lost. Now we have Small Business Saturday from American Express and, of course, cyber Monday. I was chatting with my friend and associate, Simon Liao, in China and talking about Black Friday. He explained that Black Friday would be considered negative in China and that the best sales days are on the day of the festival, not the day after.

There was a thread on our Facebook page about our early morning hours (S.Burlington opens at 5 a.m. and Manchester at 4 a.m.) and some criticism that we were following the big box stores with the early morning hours. I guess that we are because that is what the trend is for Black Friday now. We live in a very competitive retail environment;  many stores carry the same products as we do, including big box retailers. We are required by our lease to open early in Manchester, but overall we open to remain competitive so that we can preserve the jobs at Small Dog Electronics. We provide our employees with CTO (combined time off) so each employee will have time off to compensate for the early hours. Remember that for retailers, Black Friday has real meaning: it is the day when many retailers move from operating in the red (losing money) to black (making money).

All of us at Small Dog Electronics send the very best wishes from our family to yours for a very happy Thanksgiving!