Amazon’s recent “Prime Day” is the latest in a series of retailer-created sale events designed to move merchandise.
GREEN MONDAY
Started by eBay in 2007, this event occurs on the second Monday of December. It pulled in sales of $1.6 billion in 2014.
SINGLES’ DAY
E-commerce titan Alibaba created this Nov. 11 event as an anti–Valentine’s Day holiday for China’s single population. Last year it racked up $9 billion in sales.
CYBER WEEK
Home Depot’s event, which began as a 24-hour sale in 2010, now encompasses a full seven days of deals.
BLACK FRIDAY IN JULY
The tradition of offering door-buster deals in the middle of summer (under “Black Friday” branding) was started by Target in 2010; it has since been adopted by Best Buy and others.
–VICTOR LUCKERSON
This appears in the July 27, 2015 issue of TIME.
- How to Help Victims of the Texas School Shooting
- TIME's 100 Most Influential People of 2022
- What the Buffalo Tragedy Has to Do With the Effort to Overturn Roe
- Column: The U.S. Failed Miserably on COVID-19. Canada Shows It Didn't Have to Be That Way
- N.Y. Will Soon Require Businesses to Post Salaries in Job Listings. Here's What Happened When Colorado Did It
- The 46 Most Anticipated Movies of Summer 2022
- ‘We Are in a Moment of Reckoning.’ Amanda Nguyen on Taking the Fight for Sexual Violence Survivors to the U.N.