Black Friday creeps into Thanksgiving permanently?

ANNE D’INNOCENZIO

AP Retail Writer

This sea­son could mark the end of Black Fri­day as we know it.

For decades, stores have opened their doors in the wee hours on the day after Thanks­giv­ing. But this year, major chains such as Tar­get and Sears ush­ered in cus­tomers on Thanks­giv­ing itself, even before the turkey left­overs had got­ten cold, turn­ing the tra­di­tional busiest shop­ping day of the year into a two-day affair.

Despite an out­cry from some employ­ees, both stores and shop­pers seemed to like it. Some peo­ple went shop­ping with a full belly, going straight from the din­ner table to the stores. Oth­ers slept off their big meal and went to the mall before day­break on Black Friday.

“I ate my turkey din­ner and came right here,” said Rasheed Ali, a col­lege stu­dent in New York City who bought a 50-inch TV for $349 and a sewing machine for $50 when Tar­get opened at 9 p.m. on Thanks­giv­ing. “Then I’m going home and eat­ing more.”

This new approach could become a hol­i­day shop­ping sea­son tradition.

“It’s Black Thurs­day and Fri­day com­bined,” said Jackie Fer­nan­dez, a retail expert at the con­sult­ing firm Deloitte. “This is going to be a new nor­mal of how we shop.”

It won’t be clear for a few days how many shop­pers took advan­tage of the Thanks­giv­ing hours. But about 17 per­cent of peo­ple said ear­lier this month that they planned to shop at stores that opened on Thanks­giv­ing, accord­ing to an Inter­na­tional Coun­cil of Shop­ping Centers-Goldman Sachs sur­vey of 1,000 consumers.

Mean­while, 33 per­cent intended to shop on Black Fri­day, down 1 per­cent­age point from last year. Over­all, it is esti­mated that sales on Black Fri­day will be up 3.8 per­cent to $11.4 bil­lion this year, accord­ing to tech­nol­ogy com­pany Shop­per­Trak, which did not fore­cast sales from Thanks­giv­ing Day.

The Black Fri­day creep began in earnest a few years ago when stores real­ized that sales alone weren’t enough to lure shop­pers, espe­cially with Amer­i­cans becom­ing more com­fort­able buy­ing things online. Open­ing on Thanks­giv­ing was risky, with some employ­ees and shop­pers com­plain­ing it was almost sacrilegious.

But many stores evi­dently felt they needed an edge, espe­cially this sea­son, when many Amer­i­cans are wor­ried about high unem­ploy­ment and won­der­ing whether Con­gress will be able to head off tax increases and spend­ing cuts before the U.S. reaches the “fis­cal cliff” in January.

Over­all, the National Retail Fed­er­a­tion esti­mates that sales in Novem­ber and Decem­ber will rise 4.1 per­cent this year to $586.1 bil­lion, below last year’s 5.6 percent.

“Every retailer wants to beat every­one else,” said C. Britt Beemer, chair­man of America’s Research Group, a firm based in Charleston, S.C. “Shop­pers love it.”

At Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, most of its 4,000 U.S. name­sake stores are already open 24 hours year-round. But the chain added spe­cial sales at 8 p.m. on Thanks­giv­ing, two hours ear­lier than a year ago.

The com­pany said that its start to the hol­i­day sea­son was “the best ever,” with nearly 10 mil­lion trans­ac­tions and 5,000 items sold per sec­ond from 8 p.m. to mid­night on Thanksgiving.

Toys R Us opened at 8 p.m. on Thanks­giv­ing, an hour ear­lier than last year.

Macy’s, which opened at mid­night on Thanks­giv­ing, had 12,000 cus­tomers wrapped around its store in New York’s Her­ald Square.

The ear­lier start also meant the vio­lence asso­ci­ated with shop­pers fight­ing for bar­gains like­wise began ear­lier. On Thanks­giv­ing night, a cou­ple was struck by an SUV while walk­ing into a Wal-Mart in Wash­ing­ton state, and in Texas, a fight broke out when a man tried to cut the queue at a Sears store in San Anto­nio. Two peo­ple also were shot and wounded in Tal­la­has­see, Fla., in a dis­agree­ment that police believe was over a park­ing spot out­side a Wal-Mart.

Julie Hansen, a spokes­woman at Min­neapo­lis’ Mall of Amer­ica, the nation’s largest shop­ping cen­ter, reported that 30,000 shop­pers showed up for the mall’s mid­night open­ing, up from 20,000 last year. “This was addi­tional dol­lars,” Hansen said. This year, 200 of the 520 mall ten­ants opened at mid­night fol­low­ing Thanks­giv­ing. That’s dou­ble from a year ago.

To be sure, it’s not clear whether the longer hours will turn into extra dol­lars for retail­ers, or whether sales will sim­ply be spread out over two days.

The Thanks­giv­ing open­ings appeared to cre­ate two waves of shop­pers — the late-nights and the early birds.

Sam Chan­dler and his wife, Lori, were among the night owls. They started shop­ping at mid­night on Thanks­giv­ing. By the time they reached the Wal-Mart in Greenville, S.C., early Fri­day, they had already hit sev­eral stores, includ­ing Tar­get and Best Buy.

“We’ve learned over the years, you have to stand in line early and pray,” Sam said.

Stu and April Schatz of Rock­land County, N.Y., went to the Gar­den State Plaza mall in Para­mus, N.J., which didn’t open until 7 a.m. on Black Fri­day, because they didn’t want to deal with the crowds that show up late on Thanks­giv­ing night.

“It’s so much more civ­i­lized going in the morn­ing,” said April Schatz, a teacher. “We wanted to enjoy our evening.”

Posted by AP News on Nov 23 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.