Andrea Felsted, Columnist

Black Friday Has Been a Disaster for Britain

U.K. retailers are ruing their embrace of the U.S. Thanksgiving phenomenon. Their European peers should avoid it like the plague.

November 21, 2018 at 5:00 AM UTC

By Andrea Felsted

Andrea Felsted is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering consumer goods and the retail industry. Previously, she was a reporter for the Financial Times.

Good luck putting this genie back in the bottle.
Photographer: Simon Dawson

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Black Friday is a little like Brexit. Some British retailers have grown tired of taking part in a foreign invention and want to retreat — even as their counterparts in continental Europe are ramping up their engagement.

But even though the U.K. leavers are probably right in this case, this imported shopping phenomenon is almost impossible to stop. That’s something store chains in France, Germany and elsewhere should consider carefully before getting their customers hooked on the giveaway promotions.