Alan From Trainn Mentioned In NY Times

Well i was reading the newspaper during a long ass 3 hour lecture and bam i come up to this article and i read alan turk and bam i think of mr trainn and it turns out its him here is the article long read do what u want with it.


Shop-Till-You-Drop Specials, Revealed Here First


By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published November 17, 2005

For retailers, the day after Thanksgiving is a painstakingly orchestrated affair.

Prices are scientifically slashed, down to the penny. Sales begin at dawn. And glossy circulars containing the well-laid plans are distributed just a day or two ahead to keep consumers and competitors in the dark.
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Ana Elisa Fuentes for The New York Times

Michael Brim in his dorm room at California Polytechnic, where he operates a Web site that tips off shoppers.

Or at least that is how it worked before people like Michael Brim came along. From a cramped dorm room in California, Mr. Brim, an 18-year-old college freshman who dines on Lucky Charms and says he rarely shops, is abruptly pulling back the curtain on the biggest shopping day of the year.

His Web site, BF2005.com, publishes the circulars for what retailers call Black Friday - the day that officially starts the holiday shopping season - weeks ahead of time.

So far this year, sources have leaked advertisements to him from Toys "R" Us (showing the Barbie Fashion Show Mall, regularly $99.99, for $29.97); Sears (a Canon ZR100 MiniDV camcorder, regularly $329.99, for $249.99); and Ace Hardware (a Skil 12-volt drill, regularly $44.99, for $24.99).

Mr. Brim says his motive is to educate consumers. But retailers are furious, arguing that the site jeopardizes their holiday business, and they have threatened legal action.

But BF2005.com is not their only problem. There are now at least three Web sites dedicated to digging up Black Friday sales secrets, creating a fierce competition to post the ads first. It is so heated, in fact, that all three sites stamp the circulars with bright electronic watermarks to discourage rivals from stealing a scoop.

The renegade sites, whose popularity is growing, highlight how much the Web is shifting the balance of power in retailing from companies to consumers. Big national chains used to control discounts carefully, and shoppers were lucky to stumble into a sale at a store or receive an e-mail message promising free shipping. Today, however, online forums encourage strangers to exchange hard-to-find online coupon codes, and they offer instructions on how to combine rebates with one-day sales to cut retail prices in half.

For the discount warriors who run these sites, Black Friday is the best chance to share their techniques, not to mention their zeal, with the masses who pay full price.

"It's the day that even the average Joe becomes a professional bargain hunter," said Mr. Brim, an electrical engineering student at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif., who finances his Web site through ads placed there by Google.

Black Friday - so named because it traditionally was the point when retailers started to earn a profit (went into the black) for the year - is now more of a social ritual than a make-or-break financial moment. (A company that waited until the second-to-last month of the year to make money would probably face an investor revolt.)

Still, it remains a lucrative day for retailers. In 2004, consumers spent about $8 billion on the day after Thanksgiving, compared with $4 billion on the next Friday, according to ShopperTrak, a retail research firm. "This is a significant day for them," said Bill Martin, ShopperTrak's co-founder.

Significant enough, in fact, that lawyers for Sears, Roebuck sent a letter this month warning Mr. Brim that his site infringed on the chain's trade secrets and copyright. It gave him 48 hours to remove scanned copies of the Black Friday circulars for Kmart and Sears (now owned by Kmart) and a typed list of the deals from his site. He took down the ads, but he left the product lists up under the labels "Sbears" and "J+1Mart."

Mr. Brim said he believed that posting copies of the ads was a "legal gray area," adding, "It's not like we are posting pirated materials, just materials the public would see in a few weeks anyway."

But Andrew Beckerman-Rodau, co-director of the intellectual property program at the Suffolk University Law School in Boston, said the legal issue in such a case was black and white. "You cannot reproduce copyrighted material" without permission, he said.

Mr. Brim, a computer whiz whose classes include physics and multivariable calculus, is an unlikely figure to shake up American retailing. He rarely leaves campus to eat, let alone go to the mall.

Even though his site advertises hundreds of clothing deals, he does not, he says, pay any attention to fashion. Most days he runs from class back to his dorm to check on his Web site, snacking on a buffet of Pringles, Lucky Charms and Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies laid out on his bookshelf.
But Mr. Brim is obsessed with bargains. He recalls watching his mother and father debate which big-screen television to buy - a 42-inch model for $1,500 at Costco or a 65-inch version for $1,700 from a local electronics store. (They took the bigger one. "More bang for the buck," Mr. Brim said.)

When Dell offered a coupon for $750 off a computer purchase over $1,500 this summer, Mr. Brim bought six laptops, then sold them for a profit of $200 apiece.

Mr. Brim said the idea for the Black Friday Web site came to him three years ago when he discovered ads from retailers like Best Buy and Wal-Mart circulating in online forums well before Thanksgiving. Patient Web surfers could track down all the discounts if they had two hours to spend, but Mr. Brim wanted to organize the deals on a single site that would operate from mid-October to the end of November.

Bf2004.net, which Mr. Brim set up at home when he was a high school senior, described itself as "the ultimate collection of rumored" Black Friday deals. Mr. Brim said the site had cost roughly $600 to operate - $10 for the domain name and the rest to pay for computer servers. At first, he borrowed leaked circulars from the forums. But as the site gained a modest following (Mr. Brim estimated more than 200,000 visitors a week) it attracted what he wanted most a steady stream of retail circulars.

Mr. Brim says he does not know the full identities of the leakers. Judging by the quality of the copies, which generally arrive as digital images or scanned copies, he suspects they are either from store employees or printing plant workers, neither of whom, he conceded, may be authorized to distribute the circulars.

Those who want to leak an ad have plenty of options. Besides Mr. Brim, there is Brad Olson, 26, who runs Gottadeal.com out of his parents' house near Milwaukee, and [baadbc118ff]Alan Smolek, 21, who runs BlackFridayAds.com from his apartment near Chicago.[/baadbc118ff]

The three sites openly compete, like newspapers chasing the same news tip, to publish the contents of big circulars first. Gottadeal.com scored perhaps the season's biggest coup when Mr. Olson obtained a copy of Wal-Mart's Black Friday ad in late October.

Since then, Mr. Olson has been first to post the circulars of Best Buy, OfficeMax and Kohl's, among others. Mr. Brim was the first to post ads from Kmart, Toys "R" Us and Radio Shack. BlackFridayAds.com posted CompUSA.

Because the sites occasionally lift one another's circulars, each etches its name across every ad in capital letters. Gottadeal.com even inserted the image of the "Baywatch" star David Hasselhoff on Page 3 of this year's Sears circular as "an extra security measure," Mr. Olson said.

In 2004, both Sears and Home Depot asked Gottadeal.com to remove their circulars. Mr. Olson complied. But "the majority of stores don't care," he said. "It's free publicity for them."

Not all retailers see it that way. "We would rather the information not be out there," said Charles Hodges, a spokesman for Radio Shack. "We like to surprise people when they get their circulars in the mail."

Jerry Shields, a spokesman for Home Depot, said that by tipping off the public to Black Friday bargains weeks in advance, the Web sites "could enable competing retailers to react and change their plans."

Disclaimers on the three Black Friday Web sites warn that the discounts are speculation and rumor. But the warnings appear to be half-hearted. The "frequently asked questions" section of BlackFridayAds.com states archly, "We believe the deals posted to be very good guesses (wink, wink)."

Publicly, retail executives declined to confirm the accuracy of the circulars on the Black Friday sites. Several acknowledged, however, that they are correct and expressed dismay that either their own employees or outsiders hired to print the ads were leaking them.

"We wouldn't want this to become a habit, by any means," said Mr. Hodges, the Radio Shack spokesman.

Mr. Brim has already registered a new site for next holiday season. And he is still waiting for two big circulars this week to round out his 2005 collection Circuit City and Target. His biggest fear is that a source will leak one of them while he is in class.

"In physics I'll be thinking about Black Friday," he said. "It's almost an obsession."

nice avy

and the same to u )

I've been dealing with the media all day today. I also had comments in Chicago / Orlando / Fort Lauderdale / France papers today.

Here's a link to one Tribune article

http//www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0511170136nov17,1,7497332.story?coll=chi-homepagenews-utl

For those in the Philadelphia area, the site will also be featured on the CBS evening news either tomorrow or Monday night.

Alan

alans its amazing how u keep ur sites in check and deal with the media at the same time u sent my gift out almost immediately after i got approved u rock dude.

im all hyped up about black friday )

yehaa!!

walmart serving up those 400 dollar lappies )

Ft Lauderdale, really?? can you send me the link to the article from sunsentinel im guessing.... thatd be awesome.. (its my local paper... along with miami herald)

Nice

[quoteb7f8996aef="whatisntseen"]Ft Lauderdale, really?? can you send me the link to the article from sunsentinel im guessing.... thatd be awesome.. (its my local paper... along with miami herald)[/quoteb7f8996aef]

http//www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/chi-0511170136nov17,0,7718213.story?coll=sfla-business-front

Alan

[quotebc88ce49e8="Kidd"]and the same to u )[/quotebc88ce49e8]

Thanks. Want to go out?


















j/k just for you people who believe everything you hear.

[quote68b494d1dc="J4320"][quote68b494d1dc="Kidd"]and the same to u )[/quote68b494d1dc]

Thanks. Want to go out?

[/quote68b494d1dc]

whooo... boy friend and boyfriend, sittin in the tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g

there was something similar to that on the news tonite. black friday will be hell. i might park in the best buy parking lot and sell a couple of 360's ). getting one from gamestop that i preordered, one at wal-mart at 12am in a podunk town, and one at best buy when they open on nov 22 at 9am P

[quote17d62e55a4="Trainn-Alan"]I've been dealing with the media all day today. I also had comments in Chicago / Orlando / Fort Lauderdale / France papers today.

Here's a link to one Tribune article

http//www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0511170136nov17,1,7497332.story?coll=chi-homepagenews-utl

For those in the Philadelphia area, the site will also be featured on the CBS evening news either tomorrow or Monday night.

Alan[/quote17d62e55a4]

Really? I'll have to watch for it...

BF2005.com, as of 1210 am EST is not working for me. The main site page loads but whenever I try and see a stores' add it gives me a 404 error...

[quotefede5877c9="Godrockdj"]BF2005.com, as of 1210 am EST is not working for me. The main site page loads but whenever I try and see a stores' add it gives me a 404 error...[/quotefede5877c9]
Works for me. shrug

[quote03ef434dae="Godrockdj"]Really? I'll have to watch for it...[/quote03ef434dae]

Yeah, they wanted to send a crew over to film a segment, but we couldn't set up a time that works for both of us. They're going to try to get it in tomorrow's show, but depending on the stories for that newscast, they may bump it to Monday.

[quote03ef434dae="Godrockdj"]BF2005.com, as of 1210 am EST is not working for me. The main site page loads but whenever I try and see a stores' add it gives me a 404 error...[/quote03ef434dae]

All 3 Black Friday sites have went through an insane amount of server resources and it requires nearly daily server changes to handle the load without breaking the bank. If they are not working right away, check back a few moments later and they should be working.

Alan