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Strategies & Market Trends : Galapagos Islands -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MulhollandDrive who wrote (14703)	11/30/2002 1:54:48 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 57110

this is really sick.. (wonder how the kid's college fund is faring) Ms. Freeman, a 27-year-old single mother, has been hitting the stores well before 5 a.m. for the past five years. She has no plans to quit her tradition of doing most of her shopping on Black Friday, despite the day's decline to the sixth-biggest shopping day of the year. "My salary has probably increased 50 percent since I started doing this when I moved" to the Washington area six years ago, Ms. Freeman says at 4:32 a.m. She is standing in line with her boyfriend, Fred Funes, and 60 other shoppers to enter the KayBee toy store when it opens at 5 a.m. at the Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax. "But I'm still a frugal shopper, even having the extra income, and I never buy something at full price," said Ms. Freeman, a technical recruiter for EIdea/Digital Harbor, an Annandale software company. "I'd feel way too guilty about it." Black Friday earned its name because it used to be the first day of the year retailers reported a profit, moving their balance sheets out of the red and into the black. But the highest-grossing shopping day has shifted to the Saturday before Christmas. Still, KayBee is packed by 5:03 a.m. "This is a bit more crowded than last year," Ms. Freeman says upon entering the store. Ms. Freeman fills two industrial-size garbage bags with seven Easy Bake Ovens, two Draw Projector Sets and a Shrinky Dink set within 10 minutes, costing her $96.06. She and Mr. Funes next head to the Wal-Mart at Fair Lakes Shopping Center in Fairfax to stand outside for the 6 a.m. opening. "I have a system down pat, where I put all the ads out the night before and figure out the best places to get my stuff within the two shopping centers," Ms. Freeman says at 5:45 a.m. as she gets in line with about 120 people ahead of her. Her mission is to snag one of the Symphonic DVD players on sale for $48 and some minichopper food-processing units at $5 each. washtimes.com