Black Friday Begins as Bargain Hunters Turn Out

Written on 9:09 AM by Admin

Black Friday online deals & Best Buy

Black Friday online shopping

Black Friday shoppers waited in line at a Toys "R" Us in Fort Worth, Texas

Black Friday online 2009 - Discounters were doing well early Black Friday morning, with door-busters bringing in big crowds, while higher-end and some apparel retailers were seeing somewhat muted traffic despite big discounts.

Mass merchants like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp., as well as lower-end department stores like J.C. Penney Co. and electronics retailer Best Buy Inc., saw strong demand for big sales items, with electronics an early winner. But there was some robust demand for tougher-sell items like cookware and jewelry.

"I know what I want and the prices I'm willing to pay," said Winifred Tyson, who was carrying a couple of bags full of clothing and cooking gear at Penney's new Manhattan store.

Just a block away, though, there was less holiday zeal at Macy's Inc., the early sales of which brought customers in, but not as many as the store expected, several salespeople in different departments said. One employee cited the recession and online competition.

While still very early in the holiday season, the more modestly priced stores seem to be seeing robust demand, while more mid-tier and upper-end are having a slower go of it.

"Most people are here to get the compelling door busters and traffic has significantly died as those have sold out," said Lisa Walters, principal at Retail Eye Partners, a retail research firm.

"Consumers are very, very price savvy this year," said Ms. Walters, who has been shopping in malls and free-standing stores in Albany, N.Y., since the early morning. "People are really targeting their spending, and the big question is whether we can see follow-through."

Shoppers were out in force at the Secaucus, N.J., Wal-Mart loading carts with everything from everyday potholders to supersize flat-screen televisions.


Nandini Ramkissoon of Brooklyn, N.Y., was shopping with her family and leaving the store shortly after 5 a.m. with three large-screen Sony Bravia TVs—40-inch, 46-inch and 52-inch models—and a blue-ray disc player, all for about $3,000. The family arrived at the store at 6:30 p.m. Thanksgiving Day and spent the night roaming the store to ensure they nabbed their "really, really cheap" bargains.

Yuberkys Pietrera and her family were also overnighters, having arrived at 8:30 p.m. to make sure she got an Hewlett-Packard laptop for $298 compared with a normal "500-something."

Ms. Pietrera called her first foray into Black Friday shopping "very enjoyable."

The Secaucus Wal-Mart, like others in the chain, was open all night to avoid massive stampedes for bargains like the one that marred last year's Black Friday, when an employee at a Wal-Mart on Long Island was trampled to death.


Josh Strudl, co-manager at the Secaucus branch said traffic had been heavy, and he was anticipating a "very good day." Around 40 local law enforcement officers were on hand to help with crowd control and an employee was outside with a bullhorn directing shoppers to the correct entrance and warning to watch out for parking lot traffic.

Next door at Sam's Club, Wal-Mart's club arm, shopping was considerably more subdued.

Michelle Reyes said she and her family decided to avoid the Wal-Mart and see if Sam's had deals that would make getting membership worth avoiding the Wal-Mart.

"We were going into Wal-Mart, but there were 2,000 people there," she said.

Allyson Tierney, team leader for Sam's jewelry kiosk, said sales for the year had been so-so, but the deals for Black Friday on smaller pieces ranging from $99 to $299 were sold out before 6 a.m.

Norma Pacheco, club manager, said Sam's opened at 5 a.m. and they were seeing heavier-than-normal traffic, with 32-inch and 36-inch flat-screen TVs big sellers.

In Humble, Texas, Frank Delgado, manager of the super Target said store traffic was much stronger than expected and significantly better than last year in the first 45 minutes from opening.

As expected, electronics sales appeared strong and clothing is doing well, too. Mr. Delgado said people appeared to be doing their Christmas shopping, pointing to multiple customers with more than one TV in their carts. He attributed the bustling traffic to leaner inventories this year.

Retailers are offering extended hours and great deals. Will it be enough to get wary consumers, battered by the financial crisis, to crack open their wallets? Doug Luzader of Fox News reports.

"Customers are hearing our inventories aren't as deep this year and realizing these must-have items may not be here two weeks before Christmas," he said.

He also said sales all week have been stronger than expected, and compared with the past three years, customers are shopping earlier. Hot items were cameras and 40- and 32-inch TVs.

In North Charlotte, N.C., deals on laptops prompted Ray Choate Jr. and his girlfriend Krystal Rich to wait nine hours in the cold at a Best Buy.

"I've never come out" for Black Friday deals before, said Mr. Choate, who expected to drop close to $800 on laptops for his sister and aunt and a Garmin GPS device.

"They seem like really good deals," he said. The big-ticket electronics meant Mr. Choate was likely to spend more this year than last, he said.

The Best Buy had a few hundred people in line for the 5 a.m. opening, but by 5:20 there was no line to get in. The biggest crowds were in the computer and camera departments.

Michael Cruz of Charlotte, a veteran of Black Friday shopping, said deals this year don't seem as good as last year. Mr. Cruz, recently unemployed from his job in banking as a result of mergers, nonetheless bought a Sony laptop that he figures he'll need once he finds a job.

"You just can't beat the door-buster prices," he said. He plans to spend less this holiday season than last year. While he's skeptical deals will get a lot better closer to Christmas, he offered no suggestion for retailers hoping to entice him to spend. "I'm not buying a lot of extras this year," he said.

Laura Mabbitt of Huntersville, N.C., also said deals on computers and other electronics don't seem as good as last year. She, too, plans to spend less this year. "I'm in a brand-new company and it's just getting off the ground," she said. "It's a little scary."

Major retailers including Target, J.C. Penney and Best Buy have been cranking up promotions to avoid a slump after Black Friday and keep customers shopping through what promises to be a difficult season.

The weak economy and growing clout of online sellers is upending carefully calculated promotions and positioning retailers' Web sites as the frontline in this year's competition.

Amazon.com Inc. joined the fray with a "Black Friday Deals Week" which began Monday with a host of limited-time deals. Executives at the largest online retailer by revenue also promised to scour competitors' Black Friday store specials and meet or beat their prices.

"You can get great Black Friday deals on Thanksgiving Day and on Black Friday on Amazon," said Paul Ryder, Amazon's vice president of consumer electronics, adding, "When it is three in the morning and you are thinking about getting up" to join a Black Friday queue at a store, Amazon hopes users go online.

The competition for Web shoppers accelerated this week when most major retailers began Black Friday-style sales online, betting that many would rather click for deals on Thanksgiving than wake up before dawn and head to stores in search of door-busters the following day.

"Extending the length of the promotional season makes perfect sense, because when you look at what people buy in these early door-buster sales, it's usually something for themselves," said Paul Leinwand, a vice president in the retail practice at consultancy Booz & Co. "There is a lot of pent-up demand for personal purchases right now. It doesn't compete with the gift shopping, which comes later."

The proliferation of online specials before Black Friday, which also included special one-day deals from Wal-Mart Stores Inc., underscores retailers' anxiety at forecasts this holiday season could be the second year in a row of declining sales. Polls of retailers also indicate more are advancing promotions once scheduled for late December.

By Thanksgiving, dozens of retailers were dangling special offers on their Web sites, though not all were identical to what could be found Friday in stores.

Target kicked off a special Thanksgiving Day sale online this year for the first time, trumpeting, "The dishes can wait. The deals can't." It was selling the latest 32-gigabyte version of the iPod Touch for $269.99, $30 cheaper than Apple Inc.'s online store. The one-day deals were separate from a promotion the retailer was planning to begin Friday.

Clothing chain J.Crew Group Inc. was boasting, "No crowds. No lines. No hassles." in an e-mail to customers promoting its early sale, while Pottery Barn Kids also touted "Black Friday Savings" in a one-day sale Thursday that was set to expire at midnight.

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