Black Friday Shopping Off To Slow Start
Last updated Friday, November 28, 2008 10:14 AM CST in News
By Bruce Castleberry
Business Editor
FAYETTEVILLE — Lee Rakestraw’s Thanksgiving tradition includes food, football, friends and family.
What’s different is he celebrates it in the parking lot of Best Buy No. 351 in Fayetteville.
For each of the last seven years, Rakestraw has waited in line to take part in “Black Friday.” The day after Thanksgiving is considered by retailers as the crucial sales day that kicks off the holiday shopping season and provides a jump start for businesses to go into the black on their ledgers. The holiday season typically accounts for as much as 40 percent of retailers’ annual profit, but government reports of plunging consumer spending in recessionary conditions has put a damper on the moods of retailers and shoppers.
Even Springdale’s Rakestraw — who settled into the first spot in line Wednesday by arriving with his camper at 9:30 p.m. — has felt the pinch.
“The specials suck. It’s everywhere,” he said. “If I wasn’t first in line” — the first customers get first crack at the best deals — “I would have bought online. I hope it’s just a fluke year.”
So do retailers. The National Retail Federation projects 128 million Black Friday weekend shoppers this year, down from 135 million last year. A little less than half that — 60 million Americans — were expected to brave the cold and post-Thanksgiving indigestion in the pre-dawn hours Friday. In 2007, shoppers spent an average of $350 apiece during the holiday weekend. If 7 million fewer shoppers tackle the crowds this weekend, that’s almost $2.5 billion less spurring the economy.
A pre-dawn run around area stores showed anecdotally smaller crowds than a year ago. Walmart stores at Joyce and Mall Avenue and 6th Street were open as usual, but no lines had yet formed for the stores’ specials that were to go into effect at 5 a.m. Circuit City — which filed for bankruptcy earlier this month and has been steadily liquidating its soon-to-be-closed Joyce Ave. store — had no one in its parking lot.
And only three people were camping in a tent outside of the Fayetteville Target store at 2:30 a.m. Cody Cox of Bentonville staked out his spot about 6 p.m. Thursday with friends Yen Chen of Bentonville and Amy Kell of Fayetteville.
“We’re here mainly because the line isn’t long,” Cox said as the trio awaited the store’s 6 a.m. opening. Cox, who was buying gifts for family, expected to spend as much as $1,000 this holiday season. Kell, searching for an orange iPod Nano, had budgeted only a few hundred dollars; Chen was sitting this one out.
“Our family does this,” Cox said. “We’ll have one at Walmart and two at Best Buy.”
About 100 people were at Best Buy at 2:15 a.m. — about 20 percent of the amount outside a year ago. At the back of the line were Crystal Kieffer and Isaac Lane of Fayetteville, who had been waiting only an hour for the 5 a.m. store opening.
Kieffer, in the market for a flat-screen television and an Xbox 360, was a first-time Black Friday shopper. Her friend Lane was a veteran who said he’d braved much more severe conditions in his native Maine than the damp 48 degree temperature early this morning.
“The economy is definitely affecting people’s coming out,” Lane said. “But you gotta take advantage of deals when you can when the economy is this bad.”
Reader Comments (6 comment(s))
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ozarks wrote on Nov 28, 2008 12:08 PM:
BCR wrote on Nov 28, 2008 12:53 PM:
Food on the table, a warm fire in the fireplace, and that baby girl covered in chocolate pie, and an entire family simply enjoying each other.
That's what was important, and really the only present I needed. "
randybradley wrote on Nov 28, 2008 3:24 PM:
ironfortified wrote on Nov 28, 2008 5:19 PM:
myopinion wrote on Nov 28, 2008 5:25 PM:
Not already registered?
lifer66 wrote on Nov 28, 2008 11:27 AM: