Black Friday shows surge of shoppers

Early numbers aren’t out yet on how many shoppers headed to stores on Thanksgiving, but it’s expected that more than three times the number of people will venture out to shop on the day after the holiday known as Black Friday. And Wal-Mart’s Steve Bratspies, chief merchandising officer, said the chain saw more shoppers going back forth between its website and its stores compared with a year.

“Literally as those items went live on the site, we saw an incredible surge in traffic”, he said.

They report annual online revenues of £1.4 billion and here at Capacitas we typically see 2% of demand taking place on Black Friday.

So you missed the doorbuster deals on Thanksgiving, and didn’t make it out this morning.

Traffic through the lakes area was busy Friday with crowds reported in area stores and parking lots sporting many vehicles from Herberger’s to Big Lots in the Westgate Mall to numerous shops and big box stores in Baxter and Brainerd.

Ramona Beyer, standing with her relatives at Melbourne Square Mall in Melbourne, Fla., holding cups of Starbucks coffee, said she’s been Black Friday shopping since her two sons were in diapers.

Gloria Romero, 23, from the Bronx and her friend, Ashley Quesoo, 19, woke up at 2 a.m.to go to Sephora.

A few shoppers arrived early, such as Kevin Regan, a construction manager from Enfield, who came two hours before John Lewis opened in the hope of finding a discounted laptop.

At Academy Sports + Outdoors, celebrating its first Black Friday in Johnson City after opening in April, the line stretched around the building before the doors opened.

“We had family for Thanksgiving so we had it decorated for fall”, she said.

“From the perspective of the amount of discounting that’s going on, the over-inventory situation, it seems like there are going to be a lot of great deals in the next 45 days”, said Bob Drbul, a retail analyst at Nomura Securities International. Williams said their first stop was a little unconventional, considering the usual focus on consumer electronics and clothes – they started at Home Depot to buy poinsettias.

In response, Wal-Mart and Target will be making all of the deals available later in the stores online Thanksgiving morning.

BLACK Friday was on its way to becoming the biggest online shopping day in United Kingdom history as consumers shunned the high street in search of bargains on the web. E-commerce sales were up 51 percent by midday on Thursday, compared with the same period a year ago, according to ChannelAdvisor, an e-commerce software company.

Top items companywide included tablet computers, video game consoles, televisions and a $10, three-foot stuffed teddy bear. So plenty of stores like Macy’s, Nordstrom and Dick’s Sporting Goods say they plan to further mark down excess goods.

“I was raised this way”, Decastro said.

Latest data show that online shoppers splurged more on commodities at Thanksgiving Day this year than they used to for the holiday.

The National Retail Federation, a trade group, forecasts that sales during November and December will climb 3.7% to $630.5 billion, slightly below the 4.1% growth of previous year.