SHARE
COPY LINK

CONSUMER

Danes’ Black Friday spending sets record

Danes set an all-time spending record on Black Friday, smashing the previous mark by 13 percent.

Danes' Black Friday spending sets record
Black Friday shopping in Aarhus. Photo: Jens Thaysen/Scanpix
It’s safe to say that Black Friday, the shopping ‘holiday’ imported from the US, has caught on in Denmark. 
 
Use of consumers’ national debit cards (Dankort) reached 1.98 billion kroner on Friday, setting a new spending record. 
 
According to news agency Ritzau, Friday’s spending topped the previous one-day record set during last year’s Christmas season by 13 percent. Danes bought for a full 29 percent more on Friday than they did on Black Friday 2014. 
 
 
“Black Friday topped all expectations. Even though we anticipated a clear increase from last year, it is amazing that it shot so clearly in as the undisputed biggest shopping day ever,” Martin Barfoed from the Danish Chamber of Commerce (Dansk Erhverv) told Ritzau. 
 
Barfoed said he hoped that the Black Friday spending would serve as a bellwether for the entire Christmas shopping season. 
 
The Danes’ embrace of Black Friday came as Americans seem to be tiring of the annual event, held the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday spending in the US was down this year compared to last in physical stores while online spending was up. 
 

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

BLACK FRIDAY

Key trial begins in Switzerland over protests against climate change

About 30 activists went on trial on Tuesday for blockading a Swiss shopping mall in a case seen testing the defence that they were justified because of the global climate emergency.

Key trial begins in Switzerland over protests against climate change
A member of the Red Rebel Brigade hugs a climate activist prior to the opening of the trial of 31 climate activists from Climate Strike and Extinction Rebellion (XR) movements who blocked access to a shopping centre in 2019 on May 25, 2021 in Fribourg. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP)

The campaigners, mostly aged between 19 and 25, were previously found to have acted illegally when they protested against the promotion of “Black Friday” — a now-global shopping festival held every November 29th that the activists said was an unsustainable celebration of consumption.

Swiss courts have in the past sometimes ruled that such acts of civil disobedience were justified because of the urgency of the global fight to combat climate change.

The case, due to last for four days, is the biggest trial related to climate change issues in Switzerland to date, according to media reports.

On November 29th, 2019, demonstrations were staged at shopping malls across Europe in the first “Block Friday” to denounce the environmental toll of mass consumption, according to the Extinction Rebellion network.

In the latest case, the activists were fined for taking part in an unauthorised protest, disturbing public order and disobeying police, according to Swiss news agency ATS.

But the environmentalists are challenging the penalties handed down by prosecutors.

The trial is already promising to prove contentious. The dozen lawyers for the defence complained some weeks ago that the presiding judge had not granted them the right to call certain expert witnesses — among them, Nobel chemistry prize winner and environmental advocate Jacques Dubochet.

While trials of climate activists have multiplied in recent months in Switzerland, defence lawyers have repeatedly, and sometimes successfully, invoked a “state of necessity” due to the climate emergency.

In January 2020, a judge accepted that defence in the case of 12 activists who had entered a branch of Credit Suisse in November 2018 dressed up as Roger Federer.

They were protesting against the investments in fossil fuels by the bank, a key sponsor of the Swiss tennis star.

The judge ruled that their actions were legitimate in the face of the climate emergency.

That ruling was overturned on appeal, with the higher court arguing that the activists could have used other legal means.

But last October, a Geneva court of appeal in turn acquitted a young activist who in 2018 vandalised the headquarters of Credit Suisse in another protest against its fossil fuel investments, citing “the state of necessity” in the face of the climate emergency.

SHOW COMMENTS