Black Friday crowds, sales down this year
NEW YORK — On this year’s Black Friday, things almost seem normal.
Malls and stores report decent-sized crowds, if not the floods of people that used to fight over the latest toys and electronics — online shopping is much too common for that now, and discounts are both more subdued and spread out over the weeks leading up to Christmas, on both websites and in stores.
But out-of-stock items due to supply crunches, higher prices for gas and food, and labor shortages that make it more difficult to respond to customers are also causing frustrations for shoppers.
The country’s largest mall, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., reported overall traffic numbers at its opening on Friday were up by more than double compared to a year ago.
“We had a fantastic start,” said Mall of America senior vice president Jill Renslow.
Like many retailers and restaurants, however, staffing issues affected the mall and it had to trim its hours.
Black Friday sales in stores and online were up 12% by mid-morning, according to Mastercard Spendingpulse, which tracks spending broadly across cards and cash. That was tracking below its 20% growth forecast for the day.
Overall holiday sales are expected to grow this year. For the November and December period, the National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, predicts that sales will increase between 8.5% and 10.5%. Holiday sales increased about 8% in 2020.
Black Friday has a strong hold on Americans’ imaginations as a day of crazed shopping, but it has lost stature over the last decade as stores opened on Thanksgiving and shopping shifted to online retailers. Stores diluted the day’s importance further by advertising Black Friday sales on more days.
The pandemic led many retailers to close stores on Thanksgiving Day and push discounts on their websites, starting as early as October.
Big retailers like Walmart aren’t blasting “doorbuster” deals, said Dealnews.com analyst Julie Ramhold. Smaller chains like Victoria’s Secret and Gap are having harder time managing supply issues. Victoria’s Secret said recently that 45% of its holiday merchandise is still stuck in transit.