We’ve read a lot about the continued move of holiday shopping on-line from the world of brick and mortar. Companies like Amazon basically started the holiday season in July. Home Depot was trumpeting Black Friday-like deals in April.

Then along came the big days themselves. Very few retailers opened on Thanksgiving this year. No surprise there to any retail watchers. Consumers decide how much they’re going to spend on the holiday season way in advance. Adding a day when they’re normally doing something else isn’t likely to raise the overall revenue number, and we have more than three years of history telling us now that it really hasn’t.

What it has done is hurt the profit number. As we’ve said a thousand times or more, opening on Thanksgiving or even at 4 am on Friday is bloody expensive. Light, heat, air conditioning, payroll – it all costs. Layer the promotions and door busters on top of that and you’ve got a prescription for “meh. ” And not a lot of extra earnings.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the stampede on line. Stores became shoppable again. I’ve heard from multiple sources that Black Friday the stores were well-stocked, well-staffed and not over-crowded. Most people who went out had a pleasant time of it.

Post-weekend, on Wednesday, November 30, 2016, I had to stop at Target at around 11:30 am to pick up a mattress topper to bring to St Croix with me for my birthday trip (yay!!). I bought it on-line and it was waiting for me when I got there. The parking lot was manageable, the customer service line was short, employees courteous and helpful, traffic manageable. Hey, that wasn’t awful at all! There were no massive lines of cars waiting to get into the Aventura Mall, not a whole of anything. It wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t that overwhelming claustrophobic “get me outta here ” moment I’ve become used to either. For the record, the Target I went to is in a strip mall that also houses a Best Buy and a DSW along with a Whole Foods, so there was theoretically plenty of reason for big crowds that weren’t there.

So here’s what I’m rolling around in my head: we’ve been saying forever that the U.S. is over-stored, and that Black Friday weekend is way over-hyped. Cyber Monday was always an industry-created holiday that has now morphed into “Cyber week ” which will likely become “Cyber Season. ” If you’re a loner, it’s just easier to buy on line. That’s a no-brainer, and to some extent, that’s me.

But what if you like shopping? What if the past five years have become some kind of weird nightmare? Will you welcome a return to a casual day of shopping with the fam? I think we’re getting really, really close.

The other thing I’ve been saying for a long time is that no market is infinite. Walmart is bumping up against the edge of its addressable market, and my theory has been, sooner or later, so will Amazon. We may have Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday and God-all-knows what else. What I do know is people know how much they’re going to spend. And some people really do like to shop, ordinarily.

Why not buy less inventory and invite people back to your stores? Back off on promotions just a little, and focus instead on a pleasant family experience. Be creative.

We may well be reaching that tipping point where on-line starts to level off, and in-store traffic starts to rise. It may cost us some more stores (we have too many), but by now we’ve also begun to realize that especially for apparel, it turns out in-store sales are more profitable than online sales anyway,

Retailers, I see hope on the horizon! We may yet have better days ahead.