Green Monday: Is Another Retail Holiday Really Necessary?

At all started innocently enough with Black Friday, the first Friday after Thanksgiving. Black Friday also notoriously noted the official beginning of the Christmas holiday/Q4 shopping season that lasts through the first week of the new year.

But in recent years, other retail holidays have become a “thing.” In addition to Black Friday, Small Business Saturday became an event. It made sense for retailers to designate the first Saturday after Black Friday (and Thanksgiving) because shoppers were still in a festive mood, and they were often motivated to shop.

This became especially apparent when shoppers found that they couldn’t complete their purchases on Black Friday. In addition, Black Friday events began to feel like antagonistic, brutal, and potentially harmful events. Besides, who wants to camp outside retail stores all night just to snag deep discounts on products?

In order to take care of shoppers who chose to bow out of Black Friday, who couldn’t find anything to their liking on Small Business Saturday, and really, in order to include the eCommerce retailers, another consecutive retail holiday became an institution: Cyber Monday.

Cyber Monday serves as a bookend to the retail madness that begins on Black Friday. Also, this is the retail holiday that specifically allows online retailers of all sizes to clean up and realize the same profit margins (if not more) as the brick and mortars realize on Black Friday.

Yet, within a few years after all of these were instituted, retailers decided that the four days after Thanksgiving still wasn’t enough. They felt the need to institute one more retail holiday. Enter, Green Monday!

What is Green Monday, and why Green Monday?

According to CNet,

Green Monday is touted as the third-largest online shopping day of the year, behind Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It falls on the second Monday of December, or at least 10 days before Christmas.

In other words, retail marketers were able to come up with a clever way to officially commemorate what holiday shoppers are already doing – getting in as much shopping as possible before Christmas!

But more than this, creating Green Monday allowed retail marketers to create a new benchmark to hit during the heady Q4 period. In the past, retailers had to bite their nails through the new year to learn how they were doing, and learn about opportunities that might have been missed. There was also no way for retailers to predict their revenue for the quarter, and therefore, there was no way to correct course if need be.

But thanks to the creation of this new retail holiday, there’s no reason for anxious nail biting-as least, not as much.

Black Friday, pt. 2

According to the MarketWatch blog, Green Monday was named in part for the color of U.S. currency, and that’s just what retailers want shoppers to have on their minds-spending money, and lots of it.

In fact, suggestively naming a retail holiday after the color of money might be working-Green Monday is noted as being the third largest shopping holiday of the year. It’s noted to generate more revenue than the brick mortars do during Black Friday events, but it doesn’t generate quite as much revenue as Cyber Monday does, according to Brent Shelton, spokesman for deal site FatWallet.com

With this stated, it does well because according to MarketWatch, Green Monday is “the poor man’s Cyber Monday.” The key to its success is in how retailers are eager to offer deep discounts that keep shoppers motivated to spend money. And Bustle writes:

(Green Monday is)…a dream for procrastinators and/or cost-conscious shoppers. Green Monday is the day in which retailers offer their biggest sales for last-minute shoppers who are pulling their hair out as they either start or try to wrap up their holiday shopping. That’s to say nothing of wrapping actual gifts.

When consumers are offered a “shiny-new” retail holiday to partake in, then most shoppers forget all about their “spending fatigue” and their pre-set spending budgets…music to a retailer’s ears and balance sheets!

Who are the largest players in the Green Monday space?

As one might expect, names such as Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart dominate the Green Monday space. But seriously, did anyone expect these eCommerce monarchies not to to stake their claims in this newest retail holiday?

But in addition, smaller players also enjoy a boost in sales. The holiday also allows all online retailers to promote and clear away excess inventory that might languish in warehouses after the new year. In addition, Green Monday also benefits the logistics industry, too.

According to PC World,

Green Monday is also the biggest shipping day of the year, with services like FedEx experiencing a serious uptick in package shipments so that presents arrive on time.

Count in other logistics competitors such as UPS and USPS as benefactors of this sudden uptick of package deliveries, too.