Excepting the necktie, there may be no more time-honored holiday gift than pajamas.
Now, in an etiquette shift sure to leave Emily Post spinning, folks shop in the Dr. Denton”™s, too.
Shoppers at the Poughkeepsie Galleria who showed up in their PJs on Black Friday were entered in a drawing for a free gift card to the mall.
“We were very, very pleasantly surprised with how busy we were Black Friday as well as Saturday and Sunday,” said Joe Castaldo, general manager of the Poughkeepsie Galleria.
Castaldo said 95 percent of the mall”™s tenants reported positive feedback on the weekend sales.
He said two of the mall”™s anchor stores, Macy”™s and Best Buy, did “exceptionally well.”
“Best buy hit a home run, as did Game Stop,” Castaldo said. “We had people here at 8 o”™ clock on Thanksgiving night waiting for Best Buy to open.”
Castaldo said just about every store had “some kind of sale or promotion going on to bring people in.”
“It was just a very pleasant atmosphere,” Castaldo said of Black Friday. “The customers were all in the holiday spirit.”
According to the retail trade association National Retail Federation’s 2008 Black Friday Weekend survey, more than 172 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend, up from 147 million shoppers last year.Â
Shoppers spent an average of $372.57 that weekend, up 7.2 percent over last year”™s $347.55. Total spending for the weekend after Thanksgiving reached an estimated $41 billion.Â
On Black Friday, the survey found that 23.3 percent of shoppers were at stores by 5 a.m. while more than half (57.6 percent) were at stores by 9 a.m.
“Mall traffic on Black Friday was very strong during the early morning hours and both The Galleria and The Westchester continued to be very busy throughout the entire day,” said Winnette Peltz, general manager of Simon Property Group”™s The Galleria at White Plains and The Westchester. “Our stores offered very attractive promotional offers and consumers took advantage of the savings as well as the amenities the malls were offering through our shop smarter program.”
The shop smarter campaign, which clues shoppers in on promotions and discounts, rolled out this holiday season at over 300 Simon malls throughout the country.
At Woodbury Common Premium Outlets in Central Valley, midnight madness started a day in advance.
While it is too early to know how specific stores fared on Black Friday, “we were very pleased with traffic and have heard encouraging feedback from selected stores,” said Michele Rothstein, senior vice president of marketing for Chelsea Property Group, a Simon Company.
“Due to the anticipated crowds, we encouraged our stores to open even before the official midnight opening and had stores opening as early as 9 p.m. on Thursday, and by that time, our front parking lot was completely filled up,” Rothstein said. “This enabled us to better manage the traffic flow. We also had off-site parking this year, which increased our parking capacity by 50 percent. Buses started leaving the New York Port Authority by 8 p.m.”
Despite the consumer traffic on Black Friday, one retail analyst called it “a bad day for the bottom line of retailers.”
“Retailers are generating losses, not profits,” said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Manhattan-based national retail consulting and investment banking firm Davidowitz & Associates Inc. “The stores generated less gross margin dollars even though they did more sales. Their stock prices are hitting new lows; their credit ratings are being downgraded and performance is generally terrible.”
Davidowitz said although the electronics industry is doing poorly in general, Black Friday”™s dramatic “doorbuster” sales did a lot of business.
Some customers preferred to take advantage of Black Friday sales online.
According to a Shop.org survey, 84.6 million consumers planned to shop online from home or at work on Cyber Monday, the ceremonial kickoff to the online holiday shopping season. The numbers were 72 million online shoppers Cyber Monday in 2007 and 60.7 million in 2006.
