If you’re anything like us at Work from Home Desks you geek out on some pretty random information. Some of it is just a conversation someone started around the workshop lunch table, with a: ‘did you guys know…’ 

Like: how Cyber Monday started. 

19 years ago on the Monday after Thanksgiving, retailers noticed a serious spike in online sales. Seeing the trend, the National Retail Federation (NRF) decided to lean in.

In a small NRF office in Washington, DC, the PR team was tasked with naming this shopping trend. Ellen Davis, an executive in her mid-twenties, coined the term “Cyber Monday.”

20 years ago, there was no Instagram, Shopify or even iPhones. The internet was very much in it’s infancy, people didn’t have fast, secure internet connections at home so they waited until they got to work on Monday so they could buy deals online.

Davis and her team brainstormed ideas like Black Monday, to follow Black Friday, but that had already been used in greatest stock market crash ever - so probably not the best option. Green Monday was thrown in as well as Blue Monday, to mirror the colour of hyperlinks.

But, Davis liked the idea of Cyber Monday. It was simple, descriptive and totally unique - when you searched it on the internet, you got zero results. Very different from today.

It’s fair to say that it became ‘a thing’ because 20 years later the NRF estimates that 183.4 million shoppers will take part in Thanksgiving weekend sales this year, just beating last year’s record of 182 million. Why do people love it so much?

• 57% say the deals are too good to miss.
• 28% see it as a holiday tradition.
• 24% like getting a head start on holiday shopping.

From humble beginnings in a PR brainstorming session to millions of shoppers worldwide, Cyber Monday proves that even the simplest ideas can turn into something huge.  And, honestly, who doesn’t love a good deal?

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