EVERETT — The lights have been strung, the sales banners have been hung and the chintz-pop holiday music is playing at stores and shopping centers. It’s Christmastime in retail America.
It came even earlier this year. Stores have stretched holiday promotions to get bigger slices of the year’s busiest buying time. Black Fridays have become Black Novembers.
Camille Edwards and her daughter were checking out the early Christmas deals at Seattle Premium Outlets in Tulalip on Tuesday.
“I actually have four presents already wrapped,” the Marysville resident said. “I’ve never started this early.”
She bought the items online because of time-limited deals. Holiday shopping is a necessity, not a thrill, Edwards said.
The holiday shopping season is undergoing a dramatic change, said Marshal Cohen, the chief retail analyst at NPD Group in Port Washington, New York. It “is a very different animal.”
Christmas has been creeping earlier and earlier into advertising and store displays for years. But retailers in the U.S. traditionally have held back holiday deals for Black Friday.
This year, “20 percent of consumers have already started shopping before Thanksgiving Day,” he said. “That’s the highest it’s ever been in 30 years I’ve been doing this.”
Online retailers are open every hour of every day. That prompted many big retailers in recent years to open Thanksgiving Day. And now many brick-and-mortar stores are offering holiday deals that used to be reserved for Black Friday earlier and earlier.
“We’re bordering on the absurd at this point,” Cohen said. “Kids had barely opened their Halloween candy” before the Christmas sales pitches started.
Offering earlier deals likely won’t mean people spend more this year, he said.
Consumers still “have the same number of people on their shopping list and the same amount of money in their wallets,” he said.
There are no must-have items this holiday season, so consumers don’t feel the pressure they do in other years. And some holiday deals happened months ago. Several big retailers offered Christmas-in-July sales and had moderate success, he said.
It is not clear, though, if shoppers were buying holiday gifts that they stowed until Christmas. They could just have been taking advantage of the deals to make purchases for themselves.
When the economy is good, 25 percent of holiday purchases are people shopping for themselves, he said.
Consumer confidence dipped this month after the recent terrorist attacks, but overall, it is still high, according to retail industry surveys, Cohen said.
Most shoppers aren’t feeling pinched to cut back, he said.
At Alderwood mall in Lynnwood, shopper Rick Holst said his biggest concern this year is figuring out what to get his grandchildren.
“Probably clothes for the teenager, and electronic games” for the younger grandson, the Edmonds resident said.
Nearby, Santa was already posing for photos the Monday before Thanksgiving.
That is just one of the holiday activities the mall offers to “ensure our customers experience the true spirit of the season — no matter what their budget is this year,” said Brenda Klein, Alderwood’s senior general manager.
“If the number of shopping bags we’ve seen and the retailer excitement is any indication, this is going to be a very exciting holiday season for all of us,” she said.
Seattle Premium Outlets manager Jerry Irwin said he expects a busy holiday shopping season.
“We’ve got the brands people want, and they’re offering deals” to attract shoppers, he said.
High-end retailers Armani Exchange and 7 For All Mankind opened stores at the mall in recent weeks.
With new, must-have items this year, holiday deals are especially important for stores this year.
“When they offer the right deal, people flock to it,” he said.
Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.
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