We're now officially rested up after our Black Friday shopping expedition to the outlet mall. We left the house at 3:30 a.m. (and left tire tread on the road while deer dodging), expecting to encounter serious traffic. To our great surprise their wasn't ANY traffic. That apparently was not the case at midnight when the stores opened.
According to the good folks who came into work at midnight, shoppers were leaving their cars in the 2 to 3 mile traffic backup and hoofing it to the mall rather than wait. Walking miles in the cold darkness of Northern Virginia isn't our idea of a good time, under ANY circumstance, let alone for a deal. One new CSR at Yankee Candle didn't take this into account and arrived at 2 a.m. for her midnight shift thanks, ostensibly, to traffic woes.
Good timing for retailers... that Yankee Candle store apparently did as much business by the unholy hour of 3 a.m. as it had been doing during one entire shopping day. The initial numbers nationwide were also good ~ total sales were up 8.3% over last Black Friday.
From what we could see, most shoppers were well-behaved; as were most CSRs, however one shopper at Target gets a thumbs down for her deciding that screaming at a CSR was the way to figure out the price on a particular item. Psst... that's what the "check the price" machines in the store are for, sweetheart.
The question is still whether it's going to amount to too little too late ~ and whether the hot start will continue. This shopping season is devoid of the "must have" big-ticket items (like the PS3 or Wii) of previous years. Our personal "must have" item was a KitchenAid stand mixer and we were able to find one at a great price, but what else was there to get excited about? Aquadots? Nope. Polly Pocket dolls? No way. Thomas the Tank engines? You had better not. With all the bad recall news out of China, shoppers were understandably wary. Retailers didn't help the situation by placing advertisements for some of these "hot" toys in their Black Friday circulars.
Another good indicator of how this holiday season is going to develop is what's going on with online retailers. They didn't miss out on their slice of the holiday pie on Friday. Both online giants Ebay and Shopping.com saw a mind-boggling 61% increase in sales over last Black Friday. PriceGrabber.com reported sales increased by 47% over last year.
And today is Cyber Monday ~ the online kickoff of the holiday shopping season. If your email inbox looks anything like ours, online businesses are trying to entice shoppers into shopping online this year by offering significant discounts on merchandise and many have thrown in free shipping.
As our contribution to the economy, check out this site before you click buy online. Hmmmm... excuse us while we go check to see what kind of accessories we can find for our new stand mixer.
Happy shopping!
--Contributed by Deb
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