In the 4 a.m. chill of Black Friday at Danbury Fair Mall, “There were lines you would have expected on Black Friday.”
The mall opened officially at 5 a.m., but several stores beat that time by an hour and were rewarded.
Mall owner Macerich”™s marketing manager Melissa Eigen assessed the early-morning crowds positively.
“Shoppers were ready to find great deals and excited about holiday shopping,” Eigen said. “Retailers offered and are continuing to offer great deals throughout the holiday shopping season.”
The mall has engaged a couple of tools to keep tills jingling: a weekly “essentials guide” posted online Fridays through Dec. 18 and a “Freebie Friday” program. On Black Friday, the Freebie Friday program gifted 100 shoppers with Eco reusable shopping bags and those 100 are now eligible for a $500 shopping spree drawing.
“As everyone expected, Black Friday showed us that shoppers are still budget-minded and retailers are meeting that mood with creative promotions and discounts,” Eigen said. “Early reports say that sales rose only slightly across the country, but with more people in the stores on Black Friday, the holiday shopping season is off to a busy and encouraging start.”
A universl retail challenge is to fill stores between the weekends.
When queried about Black Friday several days afterward, one retail employee replied, “Oh, it”™s all over.”
Downstairs at the Danbury Fair Mall”™s “Santa Tracking Station,” an elf exchanged small talk with Santa Claus ”“ nothing better to do, with no kids waiting in line. Further down the line, a Nintendo Wii video game demonstration console had only half of its six screens in use. Outside, the parking lot was half empty even as cars backed up on Interstate 84 for the evening commute.
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With its range of stores, ample parking, and proximity to wealthy communities and major roadways, Danbury Fair Mall is a useful barometer for gauging Fairfield County”™s retail industry. Store owners have cause for hope with low unemployment in most of Fairfield County compared with many other parts of the Northeast. And even as some retailers have closed shop at Danbury Fair Mall this year, California-based Macerich has been able to fill those spaces with others, though it has yet to find a permanent tenant for the anchor pad formerly occupied by Filene”™s.
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Other big stores were eager to fill any Filene”™s shopping void: Sears, J.C. Penney and Old Navy were 4 a.m. openers.
Nationally, more people went shopping during the post-Thanksgiving Day weekend compared with last year, but they spent less, according to an initial survey by BIGresearch commissioned by the National Retail Federation (NRF).
At deadline, the Connecticut Retail Merchants Association and the Retail Council of New York State had yet to publicize how their members fared on Black Friday. One of the few major retailers based locally to hold a quarterly conference call with investors on the eve of Black Friday was Dress Barn, a Suffern, N.Y.-based chain founded in Stamford and with six locations in Fairfield County. CEO David Jaffe said Dress Barn typically lets “the big guys duke it out” in terms of major discounts and marketing promotions.
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“In terms of Black Friday, we are really focused on maintaining control of our business and not kind of dropping our pants for one day or one weekend,” Jaffe said. “Most of (our) customers at this time are still ”¦ shopping for themselves. They need an outfit for Thanksgiving or for a holiday party where they will come in and will get a great value, but we are not going to give away a free toaster oven with every purchase.”
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NRF says that buyers are hunting deals wherever they can find them.
“Shoppers proved this weekend that they were willing to open their wallets for a bargain, heading out to take advantage of great deals on less expensive items like toys, small appliances and winter clothes,” said Tracy Mullin, NRF CEO, in a prepared statement. “While retailers are encouraged by the number of Americans who shopped over Black Friday weekend, they know they have their work cut out for them to keep people coming back through Christmas. Shoppers can continue to expect retailers to focus on low prices and bargains through the end of December.”
Those bargains had a much higher percentage of shoppers taking advantage of early-hours openings, with 31 percent of those surveyed by BIGresearch saying they did so this year, versus 23 percent of those surveyed last year.
If Santa may have been miffed that more Danbury-area kids were not stopping by to share their wish lists as the calendar flipped to December, kids can rest easy about expecting a visit on Christmas Eve; the percentage of shoppers buying toys increased 13 percent from last year.
