Rebecca Day

Details were thin with the announcement that high-end speaker manufacturer Thiel Audio was purchased by a private equity firm based in Nashville. Thiel, founded in 1978, had been fully owned by Kathy Gornik, co-founder and president, since the death of co-founder and head audio designer Jim Thiel in 2009. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and Gornik wasn’t available for comment.

DEI Holdings, which arrived late to the headphone market with its first line of Polk-branded phones in summer 2011, is making a stronger push into the youth market with a line of lifestyle headphones rooted in the college bookstore market. The brand, Boom, stands for Born of Original Motives. It’s the brainchild of founder Ryan Minarik, son of DEI Holdings CEO Jim Minarik. Boom has distribution in 400 college bookstores for its headphone lineup that ranges from $19.99-$49.99. The headphones are also sold in Nebraska Furniture Mart, Fry’s Electronics and BrandsMart stores, Minarik said.

Online spending on Cyber Monday set a record, with $1.465 billion in sales, the most ever spent online in a single day, according to comScore. Monday’s receipts were up 17 percent over Cyber Monday 2011, comScore said, and it was the second day this holiday season -- ahead of Black Friday -- that e-commerce revenue topped $1 billion, comScore said. To date, the 2012 holiday season, defined by comScore as Nov. 1-26, has racked up online sales of $16.4 billion, up 16 percent from last year’s corresponding dates of Nov. 3-Nov. 28, it said.

Cyber Monday was the biggest online shopping day ever, according to findings from IBM Digital Analytics’ Benchmark Cyber Monday report. Jay Henderson, strategy director-IBM Smarter Commerce, said retailers who adopted a “smarter marketing approach” to e-commerce were able to adjust to the “shifting shopping habits of their customers.”

Staggered deals, flash sales and doorbuster price guarantees amid the spread of Black Friday frenzy into a string of named deal days are trends that are likely here to stay, said Shawn DuBravac, CEA chief economist and director of research, on a webcast Tuesday. DuBravac noted a stronger push this year toward pre-Black Friday sales, as retailers sought to spur consumers into spending early rather than waiting for Black Friday bargains.

Walmart Monday continued to minimize the scale of strikes and protests on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday in support of workers’ rights in numerous cities around the country. “We had very safe and successful Black Friday events at our stores across the country and heard overwhelmingly positive feedback from our customers,” said Bill Simon, president of Walmart U.S. Walmart’s statement, released Friday, addressed planned protests supported by the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) and said, “Only 26 protests occurred at stores last night and many of them did not include any Walmart associates."

After a three-day marathon of Black Friday sales, Cyber Monday was expected to draw 31 million consumers to their keyboards as the four-day shopping weekend charged toward a $43.7 billion start to the 2012 holiday season, according to CEA. Despite the push of Black Friday sales further into Thanksgiving night, Friday remained the most popular day to shop this season, with 29 percent of shoppers, 69.6 million, indicating they shopped or planned to shop that day, according to CEA’s Black Friday Survey. Just over 31 million adults, 13 percent, shopped on Thanksgiving, up from 11 percent last year, CEA said.

CHESTERFIELD, Mo. -- As this year’s Black Friday oozed into Black Thursday, the CE industry’s shopping faithful continued to flock to stores driven largely by “the deal,” we found in informal surveys of determined consumers undeterred by the prospect of Thanksgiving night shopping.

The National Labor Relations Board didn’t expect to make a decision before Thanksgiving on whether to seek an injunction to stop the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) from picketing Walmart stores and encouraging workers to strike Friday, it said in a statement emailed to reporters late Tuesday. NLRB staff from multiple regions began taking affidavits Monday from witnesses “and sifting through numerous documents” provided by Walmart, as well as obtaining a response and evidence from the union, said Nancy Cleeland, NLRB director of public affairs in an email.

Wednesday’s deals were further proof that Black Friday is no longer defined as the day after Thanksgiving, we found in a scan of websites and promotional emails. Best Buy sold out of its limited-supply deal of the day -- a $50 discount on the third-generation iPad plus a $75 Best Buy gift card and free shipping -- in its Countdown to Thanksgiving Weekend sale that began Monday. Best Buy also trotted out Wednesday an 11-inch Intel Celeron-driven Acer Aspire 1 netbook for $229. Competition for Acer deals heated up during the day: E-commerce shopping site Black Friday Ads reported that Sears would be selling a 14-inch for $219.99 on Black Friday.