I’m not sure if this is the second or third year that Younker’s Department Store has done this, but it seems like someone at their Bon-Ton Store headquarters should rethink their day-after-Thanksgiving, “black Friday” strategy.  I got up at 7 A.M. on Thanksgiving Day and drove to the Highway 6, Casey’s General Store in Waukee.  After grabbing some donuts to kick off my holiday weekend, I headed to the check out counter to buy a Des Moines Register newspaper…mainly to check out the ads for the busiest shopping day of the year.  The lady behind the counter said, “we are all out of papers…several people were in this morning and purchased 5-10 papers each.”.

I then went to a Kum & Go station, and fortunately they had a few papers left.  After returning home, I explained the situation to my wife and she informed me that the same thing happened last year…evidently due to a coupon being offered by Younkers that was worth $10 off a purchase on black Friday.  In Younker’s defense, the coupon included some rules to limit the $10 discount to certain items, and only one coupon could be used per item, and only one coupon was allowed per customer…but you know what happens with rules.

Later that day, I heard that some people had purchased as many as 30 newspapers that morning (guessing they were all Des Moines Register editions, but I can’t be sure) in order to get $300 off their Younker’s store purchases on Friday.  Even though the price of that daily paper jumped from 50 cents in 2006 to $1.50 this year, that person still realized a net savings of over $250…assuming he/she was able to go from register to register without getting caught for breaking the rules.

I wonder what happened to those 30 newspapers, once the Younkers sale coupon was removed?  I also wonder how many others went to Casey’s that day to get a paper, only to leave empty handed.  I imagine a similar scenario played out all over Iowa, and quite possibly in many other cities and states (Bon-Ton owns stores in over 20 states, but I’m not sure if they have a similar marketing approach at those locations.).  My recommendation would be that Younkers change their approach next year and rather than stuffing $10 coupon in newspapers, they instead hand one to each customer who enters the store between certain hours that day.  What do you think?

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