In era of online retail, Black Friday still lures a crowd

NEW YORK — It would have been easy to turn on their computers at home over plates of leftover turkey and take advantage of the Black Friday deals most retailers now offer online.

But across the country, thousands of shoppers flocked to stores on Thanksgiving or woke up before dawn the next day to take part in this most famous ritual of American consumerism.

Shoppers spent their holiday lined up outside the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, by 4 p.m. Thursday, and the crowd had swelled to 3,000 people by the time doors opened at 5 a.m. Friday morning. In Ohio, a group of women was so determined, they booked a hotel room Thursday night to be closer to the stores. In New York City, one woman went straight from a dance club to a department store in the middle of the night.

Many shoppers said Black Friday is as much about the spectacle as it is about doorbuster deals.

Kati Anderson said she stopped at Cumberland Mall in Atlanta Friday morning for discounted clothes as well as "the people watching." Her friend, Katie Nasworthy, said she went to the mall instead of shopping online because she likes to see the Christmas decorations.

"It doesn't really feel like Christmas until now," said Kim Bryant, shopping in suburban Denver with her daughter and her daughter's friend, who had lined up at 5:40 a.m., then sprinted inside when the doors opened at 6 a.m.

Brick-and-mortar stores have worked hard to prove they can counter the competition from online behemoth Amazon. From Macy's to Target and Walmart, retailers are blending their online and store shopping experience with new tools like digital maps on smart phones and more options for shoppers to buy online and pick up at stores. And customers, frustrated with long checkout lines, can check out at Walmart and other stores with a salesperson in store aisles.

Consumers nearly doubled their online orders that they picked up at stores from Wednesday to Thanksgiving, according to Adobe Analytics, which tracks online spending.

Priscilla Page, 28, punched her order number into a kiosk near the entrance of a Walmart in Louisville, Kentucky. She found a good deal online for a gift for her boyfriend, then arrived at the store to retrieve it.

"I've never Black Friday-shopped before," she said, as employees delivered her bag minutes later. "I'm not the most patient person ever. Crowds, lines, waiting, it's not really my thing. This was a lot easier."

The holiday shopping season presents a big test for a U.S. economy, whose overall growth so far this year has relied on a burst of consumer spending. Americans upped their spending during the first half of 2018 at the strongest pace in four years, yet retail sales gains have tapered off recently. The sales totals over the next month will be a good indicator as to whether consumers simply paused to catch their breath or feel less optimistic about the economy in 2019.

The National Retail Federation, the nation's largest retail trade group, is expecting holiday retail sales to increase as much as 4.8 percent over 2017 for a total of $720.89 billion. The sales growth marks a slowdown from last year's 5.3 percent, but remains healthy.

The retail economy is also tilting steeply toward online shopping. Over the past 12 months, purchases at non-store retailers such as Amazon have jumped 12.1 percent as sales at traditional department stores have slumped 0.3 percent. Adobe Analytics reported Thursday that Thanksgiving reached a record $3.7 billion in online retail sales, up 28 percent from the same year ago period. For Black Friday, online spending was on track to hit more than $6.4 billion, according to Adobe.

Target reported that shoppers bought big ticket items like TVs, iPads, and Apple Watches. Among the most popular toy deals were Lego, L.O.L. Surprise from MGA Entertainment and Mattel's Barbie. It said gamers picked up video game consoles like Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One.

Others reported stumbling onto more obscure savings. At a Cincinnati mall, Bethany Carrington scored a $29 all-in-one trimmer for her husband's nose hair needs and, for $17, "the biggest Mr. Potato Head I've ever seen."

Black Friday itself has morphed from a single day when people got up early to score doorbusters into a whole month of deals. Plenty of major stores including Macy's, Walmart and Target started their deals on Thanksgiving evening. But some families are sticking by their Black Friday traditions.

"We boycotted Thursday shopping; that's the day for family. But the experience on Friday is just for fun," said Michelle Wise, shopping at Park Meadows Mall in Denver with her daughters, 16-year-old Ashleigh and 14-year-old Avery.

By mid-day Friday, there had not been widespread reports of the deal-inspired chaos that has become central to Black Friday lore — fist fights over discounted televisions or stampedes toward coveted sale items.

Two men at an Alabama mall got into a fight, and one of the men opened fire, shooting the other man and a 12-year-old bystander, both of whom were taken to the hospital with injuries. Police shot and killed the gunman. Authorities have not said whether the incident was related to Black Friday shopping or if it stemmed from an unrelated dispute.

Candice Clark arrived at the Walmart in Louisville with her 19-year-old daughter Desiree Douthitt, looked around and remarked at how calm it all seemed. They have long been devotees of Black Friday deals and for years braved the crowds and chaos. Clark's son, about 10 years ago, got hit in the head with a griddle as shoppers wrestled over it. They saw one woman flash a Taser and threaten to use it on anyone who came between her and her desired fondue pot.

They've watched over the years as the traditional madness of the day has dissipated as shopping transitioned to online and stores stretched their sales from a one-day sprint to a days-long marathon.

"It seems pretty normal in here," said Roy Heller, as he arrived at the Louisville Walmart, a little leery of Black Friday shopping, but pleasantly surprised to find that he didn't even have to stand in line.

He had tried to buy his son a toy robot on Amazon, but it was sold out. Friday morning, he frantically searched the internet and found one single robot left, at a Walmart 25 miles from his home. He bought it online and arrived an hour later to pick it up.

Employees delivered his bag, he held it up and declared: "I got the last one in Louisville!"

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Galofaro is based in Louisville, Kentucky. Associated Press writers Jeff Martin in Atlanta, Ryan Tarinelli in Dallas, Katie Foody in Denver, Angie Wang in Cincinnati, Amy Taxin from Costa Mesa, California also contributed to this report.

source: philstar.com

US shoppers welcome early start to 'Black Friday'

NEW YORK/BLOOMINGTON, Minnesota - Retailers declared their experiment with earlier store openings to kick off the holiday shopping season a success on Friday, with those new hours expected to be a Thanksgiving night staple for more retailers next year.

Stores such as Target Corp opened hours before midnight on Thursday to try to capture a bigger piece of the retail pie. The move seemed to bring out a different type of shopper than the usual one who grabs the "Black Friday" deals, analysts said.

That meant by Friday morning, some shoppers, like Christian Alcantara, 18, at a J.C. Penney Co Inc store in Queens, New York, had already made a lot of their purchases. J.C. Penney stuck to a more traditional 6 a.m. EST (1100 GMT) Friday opening.

"They should open earlier. I've been everywhere else and I've already shopped," he said.

Shoppers like Alcantara are likely to force holdouts like J.C. Penney to move their post-Thanksgiving sales into Thursday night next year, said Liz Ebert, retail lead at consulting firm KPMG LLP.

"There will be pressure on them. There'll be an expansion of it next year," Ebert said.

Hard data on "Black Friday" store traffic will not come in until this weekend. But analysts said retailers who opened early brought in a non-traditional Black Friday shopper, with more families coming in together and buying more than just the "doorbuster" sale items.

"I've never seen parents bring so many kids on Black Friday," Toys R Us Chief Executive Jerry Storch said.

The National Retail Federation expects sales during November and December to rise 4.1 percent this year, below last year's 5.6 percent increase. That made store operators' strategy important as they battled each other, rather than seeing a growing pie in a season when U.S. retailers can make a third of their annual sales and 40 to 50 percent of their profits.

"Retailers want them to buy now, they want to get that share of wallet early," said Michael Appel, a director at consulting firm AlixPartners. He noticed that the Galleria Mall in White Plains, New York, was busy from midnight to 3 a.m., but that traffic, while still brisk, was less heavy by midmorning.

Shoppers used smartphones and tablets and a lot of research as they hit stores, a mobile phenomenon that started last year and seemed to be more prevalent this year.

Thom Blischok, chief retail strategist and a senior executive adviser with Booz & Company's Retail practice, was waiting on line with one woman in Phoenix, who was shopping for a refrigerator. Using her mobile device, she found the appliance online for the same price and left the store without. She intended to buy it online instead.

"There's a fundamental transformation of shopping," he said.

Mobile devices account for 45 percent walmart.com traffic and online traffic coming from Walmart's mobile app was three times bigger than last year, Joel Anderson, chief executive of Walmart.com, said.

Overall, online sales were up 20 percent versus the same period last year, through 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT) on Friday, IBM said.

The National Retail Federation said 147 million people would shop Friday through Sunday, when deals are at their most eye-catching - down from 152 million the same weekend last year.

The NRF estimate did not account for Thursday shoppers and anecdotal evidence suggested retailers opening earlier may have cut into traffic on "Black Friday", the traditional start of the holiday season that denotes the point when retailers in the past would turn a profit for the year.

"People seemed to be shopping quite a bit, although in talking to mall management, it seemed that traffic was not as busy as last year," Deloitte retail analyst Ramesh Swamy said.

Retailers were also using technology better, allowing sales staff to match prices customers found online and having them use tablets as mobile "checkout stands" so buyers did not have to wait in line, a service consumers were quickly coming to expect.

"I even heard customers complaining about a retailer that didn't have mobile checkout," he said.

Saving up for Christmas spree

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, two-thirds of shoppers were planning to spend the same amount of money as last year or were unsure about plans, while 21 percent intended to spend less, and 11 percent planned to spend more.

"I definitely have more money this year," said Amy Balser, 26, at the head of the line outside the Best Buy store in the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. "I definitely don't think (the economy) has bounced back anywhere near as much as it needs to, but I see some improvement," she said.

For others, Christmas is the focal point of their annual shopping.

"We cut back spending on birthdays and anniversaries so we'd have more for Christmas. We've adapted," said Cheri Albus, 58, of Papillion, Nebraska, after shopping at J.C. Penney at Westroads Mall in Omaha.

Retail stocks rose in holiday-shortened trading on Friday, in line with gains across the market. Among the leaders, Wal-Mart ended up 1.9 percent and Macy's Inc rose 1.8 percent.

Starting early

Across the country, store lines were long - in the hundreds or more in many places - with the move toward earlier opening hours appearing to help. By sunrise on Friday, it was commonplace, even at large stores in the major cities, to find many more staffers than shoppers.

While the shift to earlier openings was criticized by store employees and traditionalists because it pulled people away from families on the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, many shoppers welcomed the chance to shop before midnight or in the early morning hours.

Some workers used the day to send a message.

OUR Walmart - a coalition of current and former Wal-Mart staff seeking better wages, benefits and working conditions - targeted Black Friday for action across the country after staging protests outside stores for months.

Nine protesters were arrested on misdemeanor charges after blocking a street outside a Walmart near Los Angeles, police said. Three of those arrested were Walmart workers, OUR Walmart said.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc's U.S. discount stores, which have been open on Thanksgiving since 1988, offered some Black Friday deals at 8 p.m. on Thursday and special deals on certain electronics, such as Apple Inc iPads, at 10 p.m.

At the Macy's store in Herald Square in Manhattan, the line at the Estee Lauder counter was four deep shortly after its midnight opening. The cosmetics department's "morning specials" included free high-definition headphones with any fragrance purchase of $75 or more, and a set of six eye shadows for $10.

But for some people, cheap wasn't cheap enough - like the Macy's shopper who bought Calvin Klein shoes at 50 percent off but was still not satisfied.

"I was hoping for deeper discounts," said Melissa Glascow, 35, of Brooklyn, New York.

That could actually be an intentional strategy to help retailers' profits.

"It appears that manufacturers and retailers are making concerted efforts to drive margins, which may take some of the sales sizzle out of a traditionally big selling day/period, but should be positive to gross margins," Credit Suisse analyst Gary Balter said in a note to clients.

Lines at Best Buy stores were similar to last year but the traffic to its website was "significantly" higher, Shawn Score, head of the company's U.S. retail business, told Reuters.

source: interaksyon.com