Black Friday shopping arrives in France as Restos du Cœur charity begins its winter campaign - three cheers!

Something of an obscene paradox occurred here in France at the end of last week.

A good ol' US export in the shape of "Black Friday" crossed the Pond and arrived in France.

Hurrah!

Black Friday shopping arrives in France (screenshot France 3 news)

Nope, there's nothing wrong with that, even if the concept seems a little out of place in a country in which sales (or soldes) - the time when retailers slash prices and shoppers can pick up a bargain or two - are carefully regulated, although there's an extension as of 2015 in the length of time of the traditional winter and summer sales from five to six weeks.



Even if the French don't celebrate Thanksgiving (yet - but who knows) the arrival of Black Friday shopping to these shores is perhaps another reminder of the influence the US has on popular culture and the importance given to consumerism especially in the run-up to Christmas - whatever the cost.

That's neither a bad thing nor a good one - depending on your perspective. And it wasn't the obscene paradox in and of itself.

Because that lay elsewhere - and it hardly raised a Gallic eyebrow and certainly little comment within the media.

Just as chains such as Darty, Auchan, Fnac and Casino decided to join in the "festive fun" of encouraging the public to spend whatever money they might or might not have on Christmas shopping, a more established event was underway.

Outside supermarkets up and down the country, volunteers from the charity Restos du Cœur were busy collecting non-perishable goods from shoppers as part of the 30th annual winter campaign (that had begun on Monday of the same week) to provide food packages and hot meals to the ever-increasing number of French needy in need of such help.

Ah well.

That was last week. And France (just as life - how philosophical) is full of contradictions.



This coming weekend the French will be in for yet another paradox which seems to have become common practice.

Some television celebrities such as game show host Nagui back in 2010 have questioned why it is allowed to happen, but those calls fell on deaf TV executive ears and even deafer event organisers, it appears.

Public television - and in particular France 2 - will be in full charitable mode raising money, just as it has done every year since 1987, for the L'Association française contre les myopathies, (the muscular dystrophy charity) with the Téléthon.

Meanwhile TF1 will broadcast - just as it has for several years - the election of Miss France as  33 candidates compete in Orléans to succeed last year's winner Flora Coquerel.

Black Friday shopping and Restos du Cœur are as much a match made in heaven as Miss France and the Téléthon.

Welcome back to Paris, Marks and Spencer

It has been a decade since British retailer Marks and Spencer (M&S) quit France, shutting all of its 18 stores and firing 1,700 people.

In fact in 2001 M&S, under the then-chairmanship of Luc Van de Velde, closed all 38 of its European stores with the loss of 3,350 jobs across the continent.

Marks and Spencer reopening in Paris (screenshot from France 24 report)

Since last Friday though, they're back - in France at least - with the opening of a flagship store in the capital Paris at an address that has not gone unnoticed in the press; 100 Avenue des Champs-Élysées, "la plus belle avenue du monde" (the most beautiful avenue in the world" as the celebrated street is often called.

It opened its doors on November 24 choosing the location because it "wanted to find a prestigious address and return with a new image," as Michelle Lamberti, the company's marketing director is quoted as saying in the monthly women's magazine Marie Claire.

Although all those expat Brits - no matter how misty their memories or tenuous their ties with Blighty might have become - may have had high hopes of being able to get their hands on traditional British fare (yes there really is such a thing) they'll likely be disappointed by the reopening.

Because as the British daily The Guardian reports, the emphasis of the flagship store (there are another three scheduled to be opened in the Paris region) is most definitely not on food.

The grub is there but it's apparently squeezed into just 100 square metres of the store's 1,400 square metres of retail space.

The emphasis will be on clothing, a decision chief executive Marc Bolland defended as being a practical one.

"Let's be honest, nobody comes to the Champs Elysées to do their weekly shop," he told The Guardian.

Can't argue with that.

The company has also launched a French language website for anyone not able to make it to Paris.

Time to stock up on warm underwear and pullovers as France prepares for winter and a chance for a spot of stay-at-home Christmas shopping perhaps.

In any case, rebonjour Marks and Spencer.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No...it's a boar - loose in a shopping centre

Imagine you mosey on down to the local shopping centre for a spot of retail therapy, and while you're there, casually minding your own business, all hell breaks loose as an unexpected and certainly uninvited visitor puts in an appearance - a boar.

The boar in the hairdressers (screenshot from France 2 television report)

For shoppers at a mall in the eastern French town of Frouard near the city of Nancy last week, that was exactly what happened.

Mid-afternoon last Tuesday the animal - reportedly weighing in at around 60 kilogrammes - caused panic among shoppers as it made its way along the aisles of a supermarket for several minutes.

"We were about to evacuate the store but the animal thankfully left without harming anyone," Grégory Gobin, the head of security, told TF1 news.

It then made its way to a nearby hairdressers whose clientele quickly fled allowing security guards to close the doors and lock the animal inside.

"It ripped apart the salon, climbed into the basins and was clearly distressed," Gobin said.

And an amateur video shows how the boar panicked in a scene that was surely as pathetic - in the true sense of the word - as much as it was comical of a wild animal trapped and terrified.

A vet was able to tranquilise the animal before it caused any more damage and it was removed and later destroyed.

France's boar population has risen rapidly in recent years. Statistics released in 2008 put their number at more than one million, compared with 250,000 in 1998.

A nationwide scheme was launched in 2009 to try to keep their numbers in check by increasing the number of hunting licences issued.

Hallelujah - an early Christmas surprise for shoppers in a Canadian mall

It happened just over a month ago as unsuspecting shoppers at The Welland Seaway Mall in southern Ontario were "flash mobbed".

No that's not some sort of perverse sexual behaviour but an occasion when "a large group of people assemble (apparently) suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual act for a brief time and then disperse."

The woman who got the "show on the road" (screenshot from YouTube video)

It's a trend that has more than taken off in recent years in towns and cities around the world, and quite often videos find their way on to YouTube where they frequently "go viral".

A recent such example was on November 13 as "unsuspecting shoppers in the food court of Welland's Seaway Mall got a big surprise while enjoying their lunch".

And it was a seasonal one at that as over 100 participants performed the "Hallelujah" chorus from Handel's "Messiah".

As the organisers said on the video (proving they're Canadian?) "Awesome".

Shopping in Stockholm - some photos

Even the rain and gloomy weather doesn't detract from the architectural beauty of the "Venice of the North". And when the sun shines, the place comes alive.

French cash in on Christmas cyber shopping craze

Yesterday saw the launch in France of this country's version of Cyber Monday - a site based on an American concept.

The French version groups together around 300 online retailers, offering users a week long shopping spree at prices apparently lower than can be found in the high street.

Online shopping is of course not new in France, but this is the first time that so many retailers have come together at one time to provide a pre-Christmas "sale".

Cyber Monday was a concept that started in the US a decade ago.

The principle here in France - traditionally a country with the reputation of being only too ready to look down its Gallic nose at anything initiated Stateside - seems to be if an idea is worth "borrowing" then why not jump in first, move it up the calendar and stretch it out a bit.

In a sense, Monday's launch couldn't have been better timed, as faced with the credit crunch, the French are of course as much on the lookout as anyone for bargains - and that hasn't gone unnoticed by retailers.

Nor has the fact that there's an ever increasing trend towards online shopping, and that there's money to be made, as Alexis de Charentenay the commercial director of Cash Store, the company behind the French equivalent of the US import, said in an interview with the weekly news magazine Nouvel Obervateur.

"The principle in the States is to offer users the chance of thousands of bargains on just one day - the Monday following Thanksgiving," she said.

"It's the start of the holiday online shopping season there and the day where e-commerce reaches its peak," she added.

"Last year it generated a record $800 million."

The figures here in France would certainly seem to suggest that the concept is one likely to succeed.

According to a survey published by the Fédération des Entreprises de Vente à Distance (Fevad) the organisation that represents "distance selling" companies ( by correspondence, over the 'phone, minitel and of course online) there has been a 27 per cent increase in online sales in the third quarter of this year over the same period in 2007.

That trend looks set to be repeated during the run-up to Christmas, with 20 per cent of French saying that they intend to do their Christmas shopping online this year - up from 13 per cent in 2007.

The same survey forecasts sales of €3.7 billion from now until the holidays compared with €3.1 last year.

So there's definitely money to be made and it's easy to see why retailers are turning to the Net and how a specialised site offering apparent bargains for a limited period would be attractive.

There has of course been criticism surrounding both the term and the concept in the US, with claims that retailers were cashing in on the popularity of the Net and that users could in fact find exactly the same products at more or less the same prices in high street shops.

Such a controversy hasn't reached these shores yet, and although it could all be interpreted as a wonderful public relations exercise, as retailers see there's money to be made, it's certainly not without its attraction.

And of course along with the increase in online sales comes the potential for a rise in hacking or identity theft.

One thing though, it sure beats going shoulder to shoulder with the heaving masses, when one click of the mouse from the comfort of your own sitting room could mean you're done.

That seemed to be very much the appeal on Monday as the site became rather victim of its own success when it opened for business. It quickly reached saturation point as more than 150,000 users logged on within the first hours, leaving it inaccessible for others for a chunk of the day.

The sales period will be limited to one week here, ending on November 30.