Alaska, Maryland, and North Dakota are the friendliest states to local retailers on Black Friday

Earlier this week, we wrote about our analysis of holiday sales at 65,000 small business retailers last season. As a recap, our data showed that Black Friday isn’t just boom time for big-box shops — it’s also the best sales day for small, independent retailers nationwide.

Today, we want to drill down a little more at the state level. After discovering that Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and December 23 were the top 3 sales days for local retailers last year, we decided to see which states got the biggest lift on these days.

Let’s start by showing you everything — all the sales data for local retailers on these three days in all 50 states. A few things that will help you make sense of the chart below:

  • All the numbers refer to how sales at local retailers in that state performed against a seasonally-adjusted average sales day. For example, the number “200%” in the Black Friday column for Indiana means sales were double compared to a normal November revenue day. So, if those businesses typically made $100 per day in November, they would have made $200 on Black Friday.
  • The light blue bar shows the sales comparison for Small Business Saturday, which is the day after Black Friday following the Thanksgiving holiday. The dark blue bar reflects revenue on Black Friday, and the orange stripe is for December 23, which was likely such a huge sales day last year due to last-minute Christmas shopping.

Without further ado, here’s the chart, sorted by the top-performing states on Black Friday:

A few interesting takeaways as it relates to Black Friday’s impact on Main Street retail:

  • Black Friday was the top holiday sales day at retailers in every state except Maine, where December 23 narrowly took the top spot with a 76% boost in revenue compared to 74% on Black Friday.
  • Alaska, Maryland, and North Dakota saw the biggest sales bumps on Black Friday with increases of 130%, 121%, and 117%, respectively. That’s some serious holiday dough!
  • 12 states saw sales increase by at least double. In addition to the top three states already mentioned, these states were New Hampshire, Iowa, Minnesota, Delaware, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Dakota, Indiana, and Massachusetts.

What if we sort the data by the states with the biggest sales spikes on Small Business Saturday or December 23? We’ve got you covered.

Here are the top 10 states according to revenue increases on Small Business Saturday:

  • New Hampshire, where sales were up 66%
  • New Jersey, up 66%
  • Alaska, up 65%
  • Iowa, up 63%
  • Minnesota, up 63%
  • Massachusetts, up 60%
  • Pennsylvania, up 59%
  • Maine, up 59%
  • Connecticut, up 58%
  • Colorado, up 57%

And the top 10 on December 23:

  • Alaska, up 178%
  • Maine, up 76%
  • Indiana, up 72%
  • Mississippi, up 68%
  • Wyoming, up 67%
  • Montana, up 66%
  • New Mexico, up 65%
  • Maryland, up 62%
  • Kansas, up 62%
  • Ohio, up 62%

Across the board, looks like Alaska’s local retailer are the biggest winners during the holiday sales rush, at least on the top days.

If you run a small shop, take advantage of the holiday shopping spree and make some money! Use this analysis to plan promotions and staffing to make the most of it. If you have some big success, let us know about it and we’ll profile you on our blog. Reach out at press@womply.com.

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