Shoppers Mob Malls for Holiday Discounts
By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: November 24, 2006
At 6 a.m. this morning in Times Square, a line of shoppers several hundred deep burst through the doors of Toys “R” Us and promptly formed a second, equally long line to buy the season’s must-have product: T.M.X. Elmo.
Marko Georgiev for The New York Times
Shoppers lined up in front of the Toys "R" Us store in Times Square for the traditional start of holiday shopping.
Shoppers rushed through the main entrance at Macy's Herald Square as soon as the doors opened at 6 a.m. on "Black Friday" in Manhattan.
The standard, morning-after-Thanksgiving retail behavior ensued — pushing, shouting, grabbing — until the dolls sold out and a frustrated crowd of Elmo-less consumers fanned out across the store in search of a substitute.
“Complete madness” was how 16-year-old Ray Robinson, who snatched one of the last Elmos, described the scene.
Across the country today, millions of Americans mobbed malls, swarmed discount stores and filled downtown shopping districts in an annual retail ritual that marks the start of holiday shopping season.
Eager to attract large crowds, merchants opened their doors even earlier than last year, testing the limits of sleep deprivation.
CompUSA let customers in at 9 p.m. last night. A dozen malls, from Utah to Maine, experimented with a midnight start. And Wal-Mart, Best Buy and J.C. Penney began ringing up sales at 5 a.m. (A 6 a.m. opening at Target seemed downright quaint.)
And come they did. At 6 a.m., the lines outside Macy’s Herald Square store in Manhattan spanned several blocks. “I have not seen a crowd this size in years,” said Terry J. Lundgren, the chief executive of Macy’s parent company, Federated Department Stores. “It is off to a brisk start.”
After months of hand-wringing over whether higher gas prices and a weak housing market would restrain consumer spending in the crucial November-to-December period, merchants are now predicting an above-average holiday season.
The National Retail Federation, the industry’s largest trade group, forecast a 5 percent sales increase, to $457.4 billion, compared with last year. The figure is well above the industry’s performance from 2000 to 2002, when retail sales growth topped out at 3.4 percent, but it falls short of the last two seasons, when they achieved increases of more than 6 percent.
To ensure a strong start, retailers dangled deep discounts this morning from 5 a.m. to noon. As if in lockstep, Macy’s, Sears, J.C. Penney and Kohl’s slapped $10 coupons onto the fronts of their circulars (with conditions); Gap offered a 30 percent discount (with a purchase of $50 or more); and Kmart reduced the price of sweaters by 50 percent.
And, of course, there were early-morning doorbuster deals — a 20-inch LCD television for $248 at Wal-Mart, a 6.1 megapixel digital camera for $98 at Target and a wireless keyboard and mouse for $19.98 at Staples.
“Sold out, sold out, sold out,” intoned the manager at the Staples on Fifth Avenue this morning at 7 a.m. “When?” asked an incredulous customer. “An hour ago,” said the manager, which happens to be when the store opened.
At Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, salespeople greeted hundreds of bleary-eyed customers with Krispy Kreme donuts and coffee — and a 40 percent off sale on designer handbags.
“It’s a good deal,” said Cari McHale, as she prepared to buy a Coach satchel bag, regularly $170, for $102. “It’s a few seasons old,” she said of the bag, which bore denim patches and leather trim, “but it will go well with my jeans.” |
