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发帖数: 1054 | 1 Black Friday: It's busy out there!
Shoppers flocked to high-end handbags and accessories store Coach at 1 a.m.
at Potomac Mills outlet in Virginia.
By Parija Kavilanz, senior writerNovember 26, 2010: 4:56 PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Larger-than-expected crowds jammed the nation's
malls and discounters on Black Friday, elbowing each other in the race for
the biggest deals on the biggest sales day of the year.
Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, typically marks the start of the
annual holiday gift-buying marathon. This year, retailers are eager to rev
up their holiday sales as soon as possible to make up for the past two
lackluster holiday seasons.
Email Print CommentSo for bargain hunters who kick off their gift shopping
Friday, merchants have made the deals especially sweet, particularly on key
holiday favorites such as toys and electronics -- and it seems to be working.
"We had the best turnout yet. We had an estimated 1,800 people waiting to
get in at midnight," said Nick Nicolosi, general manager of the North Point
Mall in Alpharetta, Ga.
Nicolosi said midnight shoppers made a beeline for deals on gaming consoles
such as the Sony (SNE) PS3 and Nintendo Wii bundle, and Apple (AAPL, Fortune
500) iPad and iPod accessories.
Clothing was another hot category. Shoppers filled up their bags at trendy
specialty chains such as H&M, Forever 21 and Victoria's Secret with party
dresses and lounge wear. Ugg boots also emerged as another hot holiday
purchase.
Toys R Us didn't even wait until Friday to launch its Black Friday bargain
bonanza. For the first time in the chain's history, all of Toys R Us' stores
opened at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving instead of the usual midnight opening.
Early start pays off: The two-hour head start paid off, according to Toys R
Us CEO Gerald Storch.
"I've been getting reports from all over the country and the lines have
anywhere from between 500 to 1,000 people at every Toys R Us store
nationwide," he said.
Gaming consoles, electronic toys, dolls and and boys action figures were hot
sellers at Toys R Us, he said.
Brian Dunn, CEO of No. 1 electronics chain Best Buy (BBY, Fortune 500) which
opened at 5 a.m., said lines outside stores were larger than last year and
registers "have been going non-stop."
"Our doorbusters have been selling out and there's lots of interest in
laptop deals," Dunn said.
Gabriella Serrado of Sunrise, Fla., was a happy Best Buy customer.
"This year I was able to plan my shopping a lot better. I started at Kohls
which opened at 3 a.m. and then I headed over to Best Buy," Serrado said.
"Best Buy [has] learned from the past. Instead of having the cashiers at the
front of the store, they placed credit card only registers all around the
store, so our wait in line was less than 30 minutes," she added.
Serrado said she bought a 46-inch LED TV set that came with a Blu-Ray DVD
player. She also purchased a Mac computer -- something she was waiting to
buy, but a $125 gift card thrown into the deal made it impossible to resist.
Macy's stores, which opened at 4 a.m., also attracted large crowds. At its
flagship store in New York City, 7,000 waited for the doors to open, said
CEO Terry Lundgren. "That's versus the 5,000 people who waited last year,"
he said.
But is the customer traffic translating into robust sales?
"I have been walking through the store to see that. I've seen lots of red
bags, plenty inside the store and outside of it," he said.
Lundgren's hoping that Macy's sales success this holiday comes from its
recent strategy of matching merchandise and prices to consumers' tastes and
preferences in local markets.
Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), the nation's largest retailer, opened all of
its more than 4,000 U.S. stores at midnight Friday with deep deals on HDTVs,
GPS devices, laptops, toys and clothing.
The retailer promised consumers that it would offer the most aggressive
Black Friday deals, and even match a competitor's lower price on any
identical product.
The scene at a Wal-Mart supercenter on New York's Long Island was pretty
busy -- but minus the chaos that has been seen in recent years.
As hundreds of shoppers poured into the Wal-Mart store, one of the most
sought-after doorbuster deals -- the 32-inch Emerson flatscreen TV for $198 |
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