In a deflated economy we’re still seeing a lot of business activity and expansion in the ‘Hat’. To name a couple examples, the Northlands strip mall and positive suggestions from City Council that the Events Centre is still in the works.

In my opinion, it’s great to see that our region hasn’t folded up the tents to wait out the storm. Long live our entrepreneurs!

Supposedly sales were down everywhere this holiday season; however, I did not see any evidence of this myself in Medicine hat. I made the stupid mistake of going to get a few items from Superstore on the day before Christmas Eve… how stupid of me. There was literally no parking spots, I should of taken that as a warning. You know how you often wonder why there is such large parking lots outside of stores when they are normally only half full at maximum anyways? Apparently they are just for the few days before and after Christmas. I entered the mosh-pit-like environment as soon as I stepped through the doors. This place was packed and the line ups were half way down the aisles themselves. This wasn’t an isolated incident either, supposedly the malls were packed and Walmart… well I won’t even begin to imagine what that place would be like. Supposedly this situation doubled itself on Boxing Day where shoppers were reported to have spent 10 hours waiting overnight in line outside Visions to get a new TV in one case.

Imagery via blogtalkradio.com

I did notice the sales though, Boxing Day is no longer a day, and now not even a week, in some cases in a few weeks or full month of sales. And normally the deals aren’t that great either, but this year 75%-90% off signs were littered everywhere. And these sales even started before Boxing Day, they started weeks before Christmas in some cases. For example, the Medicine Hat Mall had two Moonlight Madness events this year. Obviously this is a marketing tactic to get people to buy at Christmas in the wake of the Canadian recession. I think it probably worked on some level locally in Medicine Hat, but I think overall, we are a little too dramatic about the recession thing in Medicine Hat and other smaller towns. I cant wager a guess at what will happen next year though, depending how much deeper we have dug ourselves. Business’s have been reporting that they did just as well last year in terms sales (on Boxing Day), and maybe even better.

Ken Gousseau, Medicine Hat News Reporter, has reported about this here.