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Online sales reach spending record on Black Friday
According to Adobe Analytics, Black Friday shoppers set an online spending record in the U.S. with revenue up 7.5% from last year.
BLOOMINGTON, Minnesota — The holiday spending streak continues with Cyber Monday.
According to Adobe Analytics, Black Friday shoppers set an online spending record in the U.S. with $9.8 billion in sales — up 7.5% from 2022.
“As everybody knows, online shopping went up dramatically during COVID. But the numbers themselves are still pretty small. I think it’ll come as a surprise to most of the viewers that before COVID started, online shopping was about 10-11% of the overall retail sales. During COVID, it… went up to about 16 or 17%. It’s actually back down to about 15%. So keep that mind. Online sales of everything is still only 15% of overall retail sales,” said George John, professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.
John said retailers try to coordinate what they do online with what they do offline. Even so, Cyber Monday is still a draw.
“Everybody can still look at what happened on Black Friday and start adjusting the sales machine to make up for it. It’s a little bit like airline pricing. When they don’t sell enough on a day, they’ll lower the prices. They sold too much, they’ll raise the prices up. So it tends to go up and down,” John said.
The National Retail Federation’s holiday spending forecast expects holiday sales overall to increase between 3-4% over 2022. But that’s not adjusted for inflation.
“It’s roughly equal to inflation. So yes, that’s a slowdown from prior years. But prior years were also kind of a snapback from COVID. So it’s not unusual to kind of come down from a little bit of a snapback,” John said.
John said shoppers can use price tracking sites to check out certain items but for the best deals on Cyber Monday?
“I know there are a lot of pundits which will say, ‘Hey, it’s this or that.’ But honestly, if you look at the research it’s totally unpredictable. So what should one do? I always tell my students and anybody who wants to listen to me, just search for the things you want and if you think the price is right and you’re not overstretched, go ahead and buy it but don’t look back,” John said. “If you look back, I guarantee you you’re going to be unhappy because you’ll find that the price either dropped or you’ll be very happy because the price went up. But either way, you’re just causing yourself a lot of psychic grief.”
John also recommends people check their interest rates on credit cards as those, on average, have gone up.
Kelsey Bitterman of Chanhassen was shopping at Mall of America on Sunday afternoon with her husband and three kids. The family came out to MOA to visit Nickelodeon Universe but ended up staying for some holiday shopping.
“I’m more of an online shopper so I was shocked when we saw a lot of the 30, 50% off which is kind of why we stuck around today,” Bitterman said.
Since COVID, Bitterman said her family has opted for more experiences over things but they still were out shopping mostly for relatives. Bitterman said she might still shop on Cyber Monday. “We got a lot more today than I was anticipating so we’ll see. We’ll see what I have holes to fill.”
Salesforce experts told Reuters they’re expecting Cyber Monday to see discounts averaging 30%.
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The crash happened when a Suburban pulling a trailer failed to stop at a stop sign, Minnesota State Patrol said.
WAUKENABO, Minn. — Two people from Minnetonka died in a crash Friday in Aitkin County while others, including children, were hurt.
According to Minnesota State Patrol, it happened at the intersection of Highway 169 and Grove Street/County Road 3 in Waukenabo Township at approximately 5:15 p.m.
A Suburban pulling a trailer was driving east on County Road 3 but did not stop at the stop sign at Highway 169, authorities said. The vehicle was struck by a northbound GMC Yukon. Two other vehicles were struck in the crash, but the people in those two cars were not injured.
In the Suburban, the driver sustained life-threatening injuries, according to State Patrol. Elizabeth Jane Baldwin, 61, of Minnetonka, and Marlo Dean Baldwin, 92, of Minnetonka, both died. Officials said the driver of the vehicle, a 61-year-old from Minnetonka, has life-threatening injuries.
There were six people in the Yukon when the crash occurred. The 44-year-old driver, as well as passengers ages 18, 14, and 11, sustained what officials described as life-threatening injuries. The other two passengers have non-life-threatening injuries.
Alcohol is not believed to be a factor in the crash, but officials said Elizabeth Jane Baldwin had not been wearing a seatbelt.
Among those at the start line this year will be Alex Vigil.
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Pixar’s second installment of the movie features characters we’ve already met — Joy, Sadness and Anger — and gives them a new roommate named Anxiety.
MINNEAPOLIS — Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” universe plays out inside the mind of the movie’s adolescent protagonist, Riley.
She plays a kid from Minnesota whose family uproots her life by moving to San Francisco. But did you know that what plays out in Riley’s mind actually comes from the mind of a real-life Minnesotan?
“You are one of us!” said Breaking the News anchor Jana Shortal.
“Yes, I am!” said Burnsville native and the movie’s creator and director, Kelsey Mann.
Mann was chosen for the role by ANOTHER Minnesotan — Pete Docter, the man behind the original movie, “Inside Out.”
“I don’t know if Pete asked me to do this movie because I was from Minnesota and he was from Minnesota … I just think it worked out that way,” Mann said.
How two guys from the south metro made a pair of Pixar movies that would change the game is a hell of a story that began with Docter in 2015.
“He [Docter] was just trying to tell a fun story — an emotional, fun story — and didn’t realize how much it would help give kids a vocabulary to talk about things they were feeling because they are feeling those emotions, but they’re really hard to talk about,” Mann said.
Some parents, counselors and teachers might even tell you it did more good for kids than just entertain them. It unlocked their emotions and begged for what Mann set out to create at the beginning of 2020.
“That part was fun, particularly fun,” he said. “I think the daunting part was following up a film that everyone really loved.”
But Mann knew what he wanted to do with the movie’s follow-up, “Inside Out 2.”
“Diving into Riley’s adolescence … that was just fun,” he said.
This time around, Riley is 13, hitting puberty and facing all of what, and who, comes with it. The franchise’s second installment features characters we’ve already met — Joy, Sadness and Anger — and gives them a new roommate named Anxiety.
“I think that’s what’s fun about the ‘Inside Out’ world: You can take something we all know and give it a face,” Mann said. “We can give anxiety a name and a face.”
The film follows Riley’s emotions fighting it out for control of her life. Joy wants Riley to stay young and hold on only to joy, while anxiety is hell-bent on taking over Riley over at the age of 13 because as a lot of us know, that’s when anxiety often moves in.
“I always pitched it as a takeover movie, like an emotional takeover,” Mann said. “Anxiety can kind of feel like that; it can take over and kind of shove your other emotions to the side and repress them.”
For a kids’ movie, it’s hard to watch this animation play out, even when an adult has the keys to decide.
“I’m making a movie about anxiety and I still have to remind myself to have my anxiety take a seat,” Mann said.
All of our individual anxieties have a place in this world.
“The whole movie honestly is about acceptance. Both acceptance of anxiety being there and also of your own flaws,” said Mann.
Even for our kids, we have to remember that this is life.
Anxiety will come for them; it does for us all.
The “Inside Out” world just shows them it’s so.
