Dawn Rush Hints at Strong Start to Holiday Sales
By MICHAEL BARBARO
At 12:05 a.m. yesterday, moments into the earliest store opening on the busiest shopping day of the year, the beleaguered employees at the CompUSA on 57th Street in Manhattan laid down some ground rules: no more pushing and no more grabbing deeply discounted merchandise out of the hands of other customers.
"Civilized! Civilized!" implored one employee, as he dumped a cardboard box full of computer equipment into the outstretched hands of two dozen shoppers, who nevertheless lunged at one another to secure some of the limited supply of wireless adapters and Internet cards.
"For an outsider, this must seem nuts," confessed Mala Mathur, 25, who emerged from the scrum with a hard drive (regularly $150, on sale for $50). "But for us," she said of her fellow early risers, "it's perfectly natural."
Across the country, millions of Americans mobbed discount stores, raced into suburban malls and swarmed downtown shopping districts in a retail ritual that appeared to set a record for sleep deprivation.
Merchants, eager to lure large crowds, opened even earlier than last year - by an hour (at Wal-Mart), six hours (at CompUSA) and even a day (at Kmart).
Official tallies of how much people bought yesterday will not be available until Sunday, at the earliest. But initial reports from retail executives, who monitor the day's sales by the hour for clues about the health of the holiday shopping season, suggested a strong start.
"There are definitely more people out there," said John Barbour, the president of Toys "R" Us, which unlocked the doors at more than 100 stores before a scheduled 6 a.m. opening to accommodate larger-than-usual crowds.
Pam Kohn, Wal-Mart's senior vice president for operations for the Southeast, said foot traffic inside the chain's 3,500 stores suggested that "it's going to be a good day" - a relief for the discount giant, which stumbled badly on the same day last year.
Retailers had been fretting about the holiday season, speculating that higher gas and home heating prices, combined with the upheaval wrought by the three hurricanes that swept through the Gulf Coast and Florida, would pinch consumer budgets on what has become the biggest shopping day of the year (a title held, until 2003, by the Saturday before Christmas, according to ShopperTrak, a market research firm).
So to ensure a respectable season, retailers dangled a long list of incentives, from free cordless phones to $20 gift cards with a purchase, all abruptly ending around noon, when less generous discounts kicked in. Even Saks Fifth Avenue joined in: it offered 40 percent off selected Juicy Couture and Kate Spade handbags all morning.
Employees at Old Navy handed out cranberry and vanilla chip breakfast bars to shoppers in San Francisco, while Fortunoff, a jewelry and home furnishings chain in the metropolitan New York area, hired a team of masseurs to rub down customers on beds in the home department.
Stores are putting a greater emphasis on the day after Thanksgiving because they find it strongly influences decisions about where to shop for the rest of the holiday season. Deep discounts, in particular, they say, create the impression that a retailer is offering better values than competitors. "If we don't have the right doorbusters we don't have a good Christmas," said Ron Gregory, district manager for Sears in Chicago.
In Columbus, Ohio, Janet Roads, a 43-year-old public school administrator, said she left the house at dawn to shave a few dollars from the electronics her family covets: an MP3 player for her son and a DVD surround-sound music system for her husband.
In Atlanta, Mesha Mullen, a 23-year-old librarian, recruited six family members to wait in lines outside Target, Best Buy and Wal-Mart. But the plan hit a snag: her sister-in-law did not arrive until 4 a.m., leaving her No. 300 in a line outside of Wal-Mart and unlikely to find any $378 laptops left inside.
"We're all pretty mad about that," Ms. Mullen said.
With the Microsoft Xbox 360 video game system sold out at dozens of chains - "No more Xbox! I repeat, none!," one Toys "R" Us employee shouted all morning - consumers turned to the season's remaining must-have toys: Dora the Explorer, the cartoon character whose line of play kitchens and singing dolls has taken the preschool set by storm; Bratz dolls, whose funky clothes and curvy figures have dislodged Barbie from wish lists; and all things LeapFrog, the educational toy maker, whose computerized pen, called the Fly, has become an unexpected hit.
Top sellers for adults this year include cashmere sweaters and scarves and, as in every year in recent memory, electronics. Four major chains advertised a 15-inch L.C.D. flat-panel television on the covers of their circulars, with each jostling for the lowest price. Circuit City won, offering a Polaroid model for $187.99, a penny less than Target.
Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail consulting firm, said he watched all morning as consumers carted the bargain TV sets out of Wal-Mart, Best Buy and BJ's Wholesale Club stores. The prices, he said, have finally dipped below the "magic price points" (like $200 for the 15-inch L.C.D.) that have kept the technology out of reach of middle-income consumers.
Dave Perron, executive vice president for merchandising at Staples, said "electronics and digital have been the big sellers." A 19-inch Samsung L.C.D. computer monitor for $199 and a Hewlett-Packard digital camera for $78 "have done extremely well," he said.
The upbeat assessments of Black Friday, so-called because it traditionally was the day merchants turned a profit for the year, contrast with the more restrained predictions that came earlier in the season.
Pollsters, who surveyed thousands of Americans before Thanksgiving, reported that shoppers were "gloomy" and "anxious." One analysis found that even the wealthy felt "less rich" because of higher gas and home-heating costs.
But gas prices have fallen, the biggest heating bills will not arrive until January and Americans are buying - enough so that the National Retail Federation raised its sales forecast for November and December. It now expects a performance that is 6 percent better than 2004, up from a 5 percent prediction back in September.
To be sure, retail prognosticators have a mixed record when it comes to the holidays. Most of them sharply underestimated sales in 2001, after the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks, and overestimated them in 2002, in what appeared to be an overcorrection for the year before.
Janet Gonzalez, a 31-year-old mother of two who lives in Brooklyn, said gas prices "have taken their toll, especially with two cars." She estimates she saved at least $40 at Toys "R" Us yesterday by taking advantage of a well-advertised early-morning deal: a $79 Nintendo Game Boy that included a free copy of the film "Shrek 2" and a free Shrek-themed video game.
Duane Rawlins, a 27-year-old data entry processor who stopped into the Filene's department store in downtown Boston, said he was on "a much stricter budget this year" because of higher fuel costs. "My nieces and nephews will probably get fewer presents, maybe 5 instead of 10."
But those budgets may prove hard to trim. In New Jersey, Hope Johnson, 32, gave herself $150 to buy four Cabbage Patch Kids, for her daughters and nieces, and a 20-inch flat-screen television, for her 13-year-old son. But her shopping list grew as she walked the aisles of the Wal-Mart in Secaucus, N.J., absorbing two Walt Disney Cinderella Deluxe Dress Up sets and a Star Wars Electronic Light Saber.
Preparations for Black Friday, which begins days and sometimes weeks, in advance, have become more sophisticated than ever. Debbie and Tom Hogle, who live in Gahanna, Ohio, drew up a plan of attack on paper with three columns, one for each child. The list, along with circulars from Wal-Mart and Kohl's, was secured on a clipboard as they shopped. "We have a serious game plan," said Ms. Hogle, 45.
But even some of the best-laid plans were foiled yesterday.
Kevin Scott, 19, arrived at a Best Buy in Atlanta by 4 a.m. and took his place near the front of the line. Noticing few competitors, he ducked into his car to warm up. "I turned around, and I don't know if they got off a bus or something but 70 to 80 people rushed the door," he recalled. As a result, he was too far back to snap up the bargain laptop that had drawn him to the store. Dejected, he joined the line at a nearby Target.
In Union Square in San Francisco, Elizabeth Perez, a 16-year-old high school student, searched the discount racks at Macy's for her favorite brand name fashions: Baby Phat, Rocawear and Ecko Red. Though she had little luck finding what she wanted, Ms. Perez said her Black Friday outing came with one big advantage this year: a shopping allowance from her mother. "Last year she only gave me cash," Ms. Perez said. "This year I have her A.T.M. card."
Cathy Hughes, a 53-year-old day care provider who lives in West Roxbury, Mass., said she was determined to find her son an Xbox 360, despite warnings that they will be scarce until after Christmas. "I'm not going to give up," she said. "I'll get it."
Reporting for this article was contributed by Chris Maag in Columbus, Ohio; Rachel Metz in Secaucus, N.J.; Brenda Goodman in Atlanta; Katie Zezima in Boston; and Michael Falcone in San Francisco. |
