Heavy sweaters and winter coats piled up at department stores and specialty chains heading into the Black Friday weekend.
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With many stores around the nation opening at 5 and 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, hundreds of shoppers landed their best deals hours before the official Black Friday began.
Retailers put more of their so-called door-buster deals online this year, leading to some hiccups as online traffic overwhelmed some sites.
Entrances were also blocked at the Disney Store, the Apple Store, Nike, Tiffany & Co., and Neiman Marcus. And some disgruntled online shoppers took to Twitter on Thanksgiving morning to complain that they were having trouble buying some items from Walmart.com.
Retailers “have taken the sense of urgency out for consumers by spreading their promotions throughout the year and what we are seeing is a result of that”, said Jeff Simpson, director of the retail practice at Deloitte. “The good news is the vast majority of customers were able to check out successfully”. Ten years ago, major retailers would focus on the 10 best items and discount them below costs, he said. Tesco staggered the entry of shoppers preventing chaotic scenes like last years pre Christmas sales.
Shay said reports of long lines of shoppers waiting to enter stores on Thanksgiving and Black Friday “were matched by reports of record-breaking online sales”.
The amount is expected to fall short of Black Friday’s predicted spending of £1.07 billion – the first time that online retail sales in the United Kingdom were thought to have surpassed £1 billion in one day.
The retailer said it sold an iPad every second throughout the day on Thanksgiving. Toy demand, especially for Star Wars products, helped drive the increase.
“Out of stock is an even bigger problem today than we expected”, Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst for Adobe Digital Index, said in a statement Thursday. More recently, a warm autumn has curtailed sales of seasonal merchandise, leaving stores with excess inventory.
Some companies struggled to keep their websites up and running on Black Friday, traditionally held to coincide with the end of the American holiday of Thanksgiving, as huge numbers of people logged on to try to get the best deals.
At Academy Sports + Outdoors, celebrating its first Black Friday in Johnson City after opening in April, the line stretched around the building before the doors opened.
“I shopped online yesterday and picked up most of what I wanted”, said Nia Darrell, a 23-year-old student, who said she made a decision to come out on Black Friday with her friends mainly out of tradition.
Traffic through the lakes area was busy Friday with crowds reported in area stores and parking lots sporting many vehicles from Herberger’s to Big Lots in the Westgate Mall to numerous shops and big box stores in Baxter and Brainerd.
“Especially with online shopping, I can see how people would prefer to just get it, especially since there are many deals with no added shipping”, Frankel-Fein told NBC station WWLP of Springfield.
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“I got my phone, I got my laptop, my tablet and, like, five blankets”, Esteban Rodulfo, who showed up at a Best Buy in Fresno, California, told NBC station KSEE.
