In a previous post I talked about my adventures of shopping on Black Friday. This year I had an enjoyable time and I did most of my shopping early Friday morning. I found a short line at Office Depot at 5am and spent about an hour in line. Not bad to save hundreds of dollars on a computer system. From there it was down the street to Staples to pick up some technology gifts and then off to the outlet mall for clothes shopping. Almost all of my shopping done in four hours.
The interesting and almost unbelievable thing this year was the line at our local Best Buy store. People had started to line up on Wednesday, two days before the sale. By Thanksgiving night there was a whole tent city in front of the store. I could not believe my eyes when I drove by at 9 in the evening. There were at least 20 tents or canvas awnings setup and people sprawled on the sidewalk in beach chairs and sleeping bags.
Maybe I’m missing something but the deals were not that great. You could save about $300 on a low-end Sony laptop, or get a flat panel TV for $899. There were deals like this at all the stores. I can’t imagine camping out for days for any of the deals in their ad. My time is much more valuable than that.
As I was standing in the short line at Office depot, I struck up a conversation with some of the people in line behind me. We wondered aloud why people would camp out for days for just so-so deals at Best Buy. What we came up with is a great business opportunity for some budding travel entrepreneurs.
Here is how it would work… Two days before the sale…
Offer free RV parking in the Best Buy parking lot.
Offer to stand in line while the RV’s are getting setup
Offer local catered meals delivered from local Pizza Restaurants
Offer Starbucks delivery service
Provide custom awnings for sun relief
Provide custom beach chairs with the latest wireless technology
Provide a party atmosphere with great music into the night.
Offer portable bathroom facilities.
Offer to sell the purchased items on E-Bay for a small commission.
This whole package could be sold for Best Buy’s all over the country. It wouldn’t take much time to get things setup and coordinated and if you had multiple customers you could make a tidy profit.
You could run a simple ad in the travel magazines such as…
Discover Beautiful Downtown Seattle
Camp at the Best Buy Store Downtown.
Three days -two nights.
Full accommodations, including high tech comfort chair, wireless internet, fully loaded video iPod, sun awning, as well as three fully catered meals including the best pizza in town and Famous Starbuck’s coffee. Come enjoy free RV parking and some of the most friendly folks in town. Party late at night. To top it off, you’ll save big on the latest technology!
Make your reservations today… only $295
This deal is just waiting to be setup… Success Begins at Best Buy 🙂
