We love them., Tony said. Much of its sales were made online.
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Not all local stores saw the same hardships J. Christopher did on Black Friday.
Despite the flurry of shopping activity over the Thanksgiving weekend, retailers are sweating as one of the warmest holiday seasons on record zaps demand for winter gear and weighs on the bottom line.
At the Galleria at Tyler in Riverside there were plenty of open parking spaces at 6:30 a.m. and lots of space to walk around inside the stores of the enclosed mall. On Black Friday, the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, retailers trumpet special deals that kick off the year-end holiday shopping season.
Online spending on Black Friday will rise 15 percent to hit $2.7 billion this year. And both in stores and online, retailers benefited from earlier shopping with many starting offering deals soon after Halloween, he said.
Last year, Black Friday overtook Cyber Monday for the first time as Amazon.co.uk’s busiest day, when it sold more than 5.5 million items at a rate of 64 per second. She found a $50 bedding set and a dress for her niece marked down to $25 from $74 and Godiva chocolates for $8.
He echoed Trego’s definition of Black Friday, adding, “So much of the previous excitement on Black Friday is on Thanksgiving now”. “We just wanted to experience the madness”.
“My other one was old”, she said. A highlight was free samples of espresso from machines on sale.
“I was looking for 70 percent off”, she said.
Despite the earlier start of those who plan to shop over the holiday weekend, most will do it on Black Friday, according to the National Retail Federation.
Heading into the weekend, the NRF predicted that 135.8 million people would shop over the Thanksgiving weekend, a slight increase over the 133.7 million who did so in 2014. It said, on Thursday the shoppers spent $1.73 billion online which is twenty two percent more than past year.
Inside, there was a sales sign on almost every rack or shelf of merchandise, as people shopped for clothes, toys, home goods and anything else they could get a hold of. “Shoppers are researching products ahead of time, targeting their store visits, and arriving in-store with the intention of making a purchase”, Kearns said.
Judging from the crowds so far, though, the shopper numbers could be hard to come by.
“It’s quiet very quiet”, he said. “This is dead for Black Friday'”.
She said the deals are important because they allow her to get more for the people she loves. Big discounts across the board meant that margins were slim – and this year the retailers are out to change that by picking their discounts carefully.
And there are plenty of toys that cost $100 or more, observed Toys R Us CEO Dave Brandon. He cited Fisher-Price’s Smart Bear, which has a suggested price of $99.99, as an example.
In most cases, the deals that thousands of people line up for at stores around the world are only available to a very limited number of people.
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Wal-Mart worker group “Our Wal-Mart” said 1,400 workers planned to fast and protest around the country for better wages, but there was no indication that would hurt sales.
