Each year, retailers denounce the websites that prematurely disclose leaked copies of discount-filled advertisements for the day after Thanksgiving.
But it turns out that a big source of the leaks are the retailers themselves.
This holiday season, chains large and small quietly handed over their circulars to websites like Bfads.net and Gottadeal.com to ensure that millions of deal-hungry shoppers see their discounts well before the day known as Black Friday, traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year.
Over the past few weeks, Home Depot, Pacific Sunwear, CompUSA, and OshKosh B'Gosh each supplied the sites with an advance copy of its ads, according to the chains and the sites' owners.
The unlikely alliance between stores and the websites, once the sworn enemy of the industry, indicates how worried retailers are about the holiday shopping season. With consumers uneasy about the economy, the only thing worse than having a retail circular leaked to the sites, it seems, is not having it leaked to the sites.
Michael Brim, founder of Bfads.net, said the outreach from retailers was "definitely a change of pace from a few years ago when they all wanted was to file lawsuits against us."
