By
Tim Feran
Fears that shoppers would avoid the earliest Black Friday openings ever proved to be groundless
as thousands of shoppers lined up on Thanksgiving night at retailers around central Ohio.
At Toys R Us on Sawmill, at least 500 people stood outside the darkened store in a line that
stretched completely around the back of the building.
Shawn Hedrick drove up from Chillicothe on Wednesday night with his wife, Donna, to be first in
line at midnight, 20 hours before the 8 p.m. opening tonight.
Toys R Us was among a group of retailers including Wal-Mart, Sears and Target in moving their
Black Friday sales to Thanksgiving evening.
"We slept in the car," Hedrick said. "Last year we were second in line. This year we came up and
no one was in line. We like it here. They let in 50 people at a time, so it's not shoulder to
shoulder shopping."
They had already scoped out their first purchase of the night: "I'm getting the Xbox 360 Kinect
and a few other things," Hedrick said.
The early opening was not a problem, Hedrick said, although, "I liked when the stores did
staggered starts."
Just down the street, more than 500 people waited for Target to open at 9 p.m. in a line that
snaked to the north end of the parking lot and then veered almost out to Sawmill Road.
At the head of the line were Julie Petty and daughter Carrie, who had driven in from
Bellefontaine and settled in at 3 p.m.
"We've been doing this for six years," Julie Petty said. "It's like a family thing."
"Every year they open earlier and earlier," Carrie Petty said.
"So every year we come earlier," Julie Petty said. "Pretty soon we'll have to have turkey for
breakfast."
The two planned to buy a television at Target and then continue shopping, "all night probably,"
Carrie Petty said. "After this we're going to the (Tuttle) mall, then probably Meijer after that —
and, oh yeah, we've got to go to PetSmart, too."
While it was common for decades for retailers to open at 6 a.m. on Black Friday and then in more
recent years even earlier to 5 and 4 a.m., the early shopping frenzy jumped to its earliest time
yet last year, when retailers such as Target, Kohl's, Macy's and Best Buy opened at midnight as
Thanksgiving ended and Friday began.
This year, the trend has picked up steam, as most major retailers opened at midnight and some —
notably Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, Kmart and Target — opened for their Black Friday sales as early as 8
p.m.
The early jump on shopping is the latest trend to take away some of the punch from Black
Friday.
"Black Friday is starting to fade to gray," said Chris Boring, principal of Boulevard
Strategies, a Columbus-based retail consulting firm. "I think it's due to number of different
factors. First of all, it's become very diluted. Now that retailers are opening on Thanksgiving
Day, that takes the premium off getting out on Friday morning. You're not going to be first
anymore."
The reason many retailers are opening ever earlier — and why many retailers began offering Black
Friday-type deals during the past week — "is competition from Internet, because the Internet never
closes," Boring said. "Every hour they're closed is an hour when they could be losing sales to an
e-commerce competitor."
Another reason why Black Friday is dwindling in importance: "I think people are getting tired of
big crowds, long lines and the danger of not getting there in time for the item you went for at
that price," he said. "And then there's the killer rudeness of some of the crowds on Black Friday.
Younger people especially are finding it easier to stay home and shop online."
There is also some resentment about shopping infringing on a family holiday.
"The feedback we’ve received from our users so far regarding the stores opening on Thanksgiving
has been negative," said Rob Woods of BlackFriday.com. "A lot of our users plan to shop online
instead and spend time with their family instead of wasting Thanksgiving standing in line at the
store."
In addition, other days have cropped up to take away Black Friday's thunder. There's Small
Business Saturday, the Saturday after Thanksgiving first celebrated in 2010 and intended to
encourage holiday shoppers to patronize small, local businesses; and Cyber Monday, named in 2005
when retailers noticed that online sales increased substantially on the Monday after
Thanksgiving.
This year, even the calendar is conspiring against Black Friday, "because we have an early
Thanksgiving," Boring said, the earliest since 2007. "There's another reason for consumers to
procrastinate."
Many of those dawdlers will wait until "Super Saturday, the Saturday before Christmas.
"That's usually the No. 1 day of the year," Boring said. "No matter how much retailers try to
get people to shop early, the consumer is distracted."
Source:
http://www.news.ezonearticle.com/2012/11/22/crowds-burn-off-thanksgiving-dinner-with-some-early-shopping/
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