Black Friday now starts Thursday
Published 7:18 pm Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Eat your turkey early this Thanksgiving.
With consumers expected to spend a bit more this holiday season, retailers are racing to get their doors open first and lure early shoppers with doorbuster specials. More stores than ever before are open Thanksgiving Day.
“This is clearly a new tradition being born; Thanksgiving Day is no longer sacred,” said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst with The NPD Group.
For the first time, all Sears stores will offer pre-turkey shopping from 7 a.m. to noon with deals like an RCA 19-inch LCD television for $129 and a diamond pendant for $19.99. Also open during the day are all Kmart stores, plus select Old Navy, Gap and Banana Republic locations.
“It’s something that our customers have said they wanted,” said Kim Freely, a spokeswoman for Sears Holdings, which owns Sears and Kmart.
Toys “R” Us found the response last year to its midnight opening so strong that this year the retailer pushed opening up to 10 p.m. Walmart is opening at midnight Black Friday with deals on toys, clothes and items for the home, but the big electronics specials won’t kick in until 5 a.m., with items like an eMachines laptop for $198 and a Nintendo DS Lite for $89.
It’s all in the name of competition. Even those waiting until Friday are pushing the time earlier. Kohl’s has moved opening to 3 a.m., while JCPenney and Macy’s will follow at 4 a.m. Macy’s is already touting doorbusters like $39.99 cashmere sweaters and a $99 e-reader.
“Retailers today are competing against each other more than ever,” Cohen said. “In the retailer’s mind, the early bird is the one who is going to catch the worm. “
About 60 million people — 19 percent of Americans — plan to hit the stores the Friday, Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving, according to a National Retail Federation survey. Another 78 million say they are waiting to see if the bargains are good enough to fight the crowds.
While holiday spending is expected to rebound this season, it’s not returning to anything resembling the conspicuous consumption of the boom years. Consumers have shifted their spending habits to a more cautious mode, and value remains key.
The National Retail Federation is predicting holiday sales nationally will increase 2.3 percent this year to $447.1 billion. That’s slightly lower than the ten-year average holiday sales increase of 2.5 percent, but a marked improvement from last year’s 0.4 percent growth and the disastrous 3.9 percent holiday sales decline retailers saw in 2008.
Wells Fargo predicts a 5 percent increase nationally in holiday sales.
Capturing more dollars and market share could turn out to be key for retailers this year. That’s why many merchants have been aggressively promoting pre-holiday specials since late October to get consumers into the holiday spending mood earlier.
“Spreading out the shopping season is a way to make it a lot more bearable for consumers on a tight budget,” said Ted Vaughan, partner with BDO USA, which predicts a 3.5 percent holiday sales bump. “With limited credit available that’s a real issue for some shoppers.”
