Black Friday at The Hive & The Shoe Hive

At the insistence of Danielle Romanetti, the owner of fibre space, about ten years ago a group of us started to do Black Friday, local style. It was a way for us to compete with the Big Box stores, and honestly, it made shopping on what is usually a crazy crowded day a little more civilized. Yes, we had lines, but it was fun. No punches were being thrown over a cabbage patch doll or the hot item of the year.I believe about seven of us in Alexandria did a collaborative independent Black Friday the first year, all opening our doors at 6am with 30 percent off until 8am, then 20 percent off until 10am, and 10 percent off the rest of the day. It was a huge hit and every year it has grown -- so much so that now Plaid Friday, what we like to call our version of this nationally known shopping day here in our old Scottish port town, is citywide. We have events and activities across our wonderful burg. Things are different this year due to COVID-19, but we will still do Black Friday with safe adaptations. To find out more of what is going on this year, click here.But the big question this post is meant to answer is what are The Shoe Hive and The Hive doing?Well, let me start with a story. Once I was compared to a pro-football coach. Now at first, I took offense to that - I mean, they are loud, yell and scream, and are a bit on the intense side. I hope I am not any of these things. But then I kind of got what they were talking about. I would like to think that maybe what they mean (yes, I do get I can be intense) is I am more of a let’s-figure-this-out kind of person. Let’s just say, if I was coaching, on fourth down I would always go for it instead of punting, like always. So maybe that actually would make me a bad football coach.Well, in spite of the pandemic temptation to punt this year, I am going for it. But we are doing it in the safest way we know possible. Here is our plan:We are going to do 30 percent off all day on Plaid Friday starting at 6am. There’s no incentive to come in an early crowd and wait on the doors to open.We will have 30-minute time slots at both stores, and you can sign up using the sign-up genius link below. The Shoe Hive will have ten slots and the Hive will have four. If you happen to pop in without a slot and we are at capacity before you arrive, we will help accommodate you as best we can. If it starts to get crowded or there is a line, you can leave your bag and come pick it up later or fill out a credit card form and we will ring you up when things slow down. There is plenty of space to wait out in our courtyard as well. Bottom line, we will help move things along in whatever way we can. As I said, we are pretty good problem solvers, so we will figure it out.  We will leave the door open and have our air purifiers going as well. Obviously masks will always be worn and we ask that folks use hand sanitizer when they enter.If you don’t want to come in, we will have Cyber Monday where the entire website will be 30 percent off as well. We just want to give folks a chance to shop in our store before we do it digitally.To help showcase some of the great gifts we have this year, I asked my family to help out since I won’t be seeing any of them this year. I happen to have a wide range of ages of nieces and nephews, and well, my sister is much younger than me. So, if you add my mom into that mix, we have lots of different ages and phases of life to help give you some great ideas.Stay tuned for more December promotions as well. We always have something in the works!