howtouniverse-com

© MEDUSA JEWELLERY

Some people have their favorite websites, where they've been lucky enough to find good things time and again. A co-worker was telling me about how she finds good fashion jewelry at goldsea24. So we started to hear about different favorite websites and stores from people around the office. This was good , given the holiday season! I was glad for some of the tips. One of my co-workers said she likes to give fine food items. Her reasoning is that we've all gotten scarves, or books, or vases, etc., that really weren't our style so we barely used them. Food, however, is usually a hit! She said she likes to put together her own gift baskets, based on the person. I really liked that idea, and have already gone to some specialty stores and good grocery stores to select items. I've gotten things such as a good bottle of olive oil, a bag of a really fine grade of wild rice, some wonderful jams, artisanal pastas, cheeses, etc., and I'm having a really good time assembling sets of things in baskets tailored to the individuals that I'll be giving them to. This way, I'm sure they'll actually get use out of the gift and I hope also really savor it!

© 401K

The holiday spirit is in the air! These few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are when retailers rack up 20% of their annual sales. ShopperTrak reported that Black Friday shopping deals this year had 226 million consumers spending an average of $398.62 each on their holiday shopping. This is a 6.6% increase from the previous year. MasterCard Advisors' SpendingPulse said for this four-day weekend, consumer spending was up 8.7 percent compared with last year, totaling approximately $50.06 billion. The National Retail Federation put this shopping total at a record $52.4 billion. This is quite a relief for many businesses as consumers seem to be quite willing to spend on their Christmas shopping this year. BIGResearch conducted a NRF survey which revealed that 28.7 million people did their shopping online and at stores on Thanksgiving Day, up from 22.2 million last year, and 86.3 million hit brick-and-mortar stores for Black Friday shopping deals, with the number of midnight shopping seeing a 9.5% increase. BIGResearch also reported that department and discount stores were the biggest beneficiaries of consumers' shopping sprees, followed by clothing, drug, grocery, electronics and craft stores. An interesting trend that has been noticed is that instead of on-the-spot buys, 37.4% of consumers nowadays research products and compare prices on their tablets and smartphones while shopping itself.

© Wonderlane

The thrift store chain Goodwill in Bellevue, Washington held its first ever Designer Label Sale last year, which saw hundreds of eager shoppers on the hunt for fashion bargains storm the store during the two day event.

The popularity of the sale was described by the store manager as a "craze", and so of course they did a repeat this year which exceeded last year's success. The store has doubled the floor space allocated to the sale to about 2,000 square feet, and has increased volunteers and staff for those two days. Taking a lesson from last year, when customers demanded much more product then was available, there were over 10,000 gently used designer items featured in the sale this year, which is double the number of pieces from last year.