Die-hards, all-nighters descend on stores
Waking up early to wait in line for Black Friday shopping deals is like a pop band that’s gone experimental later on in its career. Once, it was an event with broad appeal. Nowadays, the crowd mostly is made up of die-hard shoppers.
That was the scene at the Park Meadows shopping center in Lone Tree on Friday morning. About 300 to 400 people lined up outside the mall’s eastern entrance before it opened at 6 a.m., but the first shoppers arrived at 5:15 a.m. No tent or sleeping bag required to be first in line in 2018.
“It’s a tradition,” 20-year-old Kate Delcore said of early Black Friday shopping. She and cousins Maddy and Claire were the first shoppers through the mall’s doors. “We don’t mind the crowds.”
It’s a trend that’s taken hold across the country in the past 10 to 20 years. With the rise of ecommerce, and competing retail event days such as Cyber Monday and Small Business Saturday, Black Friday is not the dominant day for deals it once was, observers say.
“It’s just less special,” Eddie Yoon, founder of business think tank Eddie Would Grow, said of
Black Friday. “I think what retailers have realized is people like a good deal no matter what time of year it is, especially if they can get it on their own terms.”
He pointed to Amazon’s “Prime Day,” the company’s special deals event just for subscribers to its Prime service that happened in July this year, as an example of businesses co-opting and morphing the Black Friday concept to their own benefit. It used to be retailers waited until “Black Friday” to get into the black on their balance sheets for the year; now they are targeting sales and trying to move highmargin products earlier in the year without cutting into profits with deep discounts.
Still, people in the retail trenches say Black Friday drives traffic. Pamela Schenck-Kelly, general manager of Park Meadows, said traffic monitoring confirmed the day after Thanksgiving was the Lone Tree mall’s busiest in 2017. The door-busting, get-itbefore-it’s-gone fervor has diminished as more retailers open on Thanksgiving or spread deals over the course of the holiday shopping season, but Black Friday still means business.
“It doesn’t feel as intense because it’s spread out,” Schenck-Kelly said, just about the time Park Meadows parking lots were beginning to hit overflow levels Friday morning. “It’s building its own, different kind of momentum.”
The number of shoppers built slowly at Denver’s Cherry Creek Shopping Center after it opened early Friday. Andrea Zediker, the mall’s marketing director, said it was crowded by late morning and its parking lots were filling up. About 4 million people usually visit the shopping center November through December, Zediker said.
As with the Delcore family in Lone Tree, tradition propelled some battle-weary veterans inside Cherry Creek on Friday morning.
“We’ve been at it since 5,” said Barbara Stoner of Westminster.
And by 5, Stoner meant 5 p.m. Thursday. She, her daughter and son-in-law started at Denver Premium Outlets in Thornton and stopped at home to drop off their haul. Then on to Cherry Creek, where Stoner was taking a timeout in a seating area as shoppers slowly streamed in.
“We do this every year. We’ll start and go until we’re done,” Stoner said. “I think we’ll head up toward Loveland next.”
The Premium Outlets are the Denver area’s newest major shopping center, debuting in late September. The open-air, village-style went for maximum impact during its first holiday shopping season, opening at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving and remaining open through the night. Closing time was scheduled for 10 p.m. Friday.
Jolene Bracy, the outlet’s director of marketing and business development, said there was a rush of activity when the stores opened at 8 p.m. through about 2 a.m. followed by another bump at 4 a.m.
Friday morning was calm until traffic started to pick up about 10 a.m.
Black Friday discounts last through Sunday at the outlets, reducing the urgency to get out there and buy. Another big round of deals are on tap at the shopping center Dec. 7 to Dec. 24, Bracy said.
The center’s Kate Spade and Tory Burch outlets are new to Colorado. They were among the features that helped draw some curious shoppers Friday, including some who were skipping trips to other outlet malls, like the one in Castle Rock, to shop in Thornton.
Steve Oliveira drove up from Colorado Springs with his wife, Sarah, and 21month-old son, Asher, to check out the new stores.
Sarah and Steve have a tradition of going shopping on Black Friday together for the past 10 years. This year, Steve had just returned from a nine-month deployment with the Army in Afghanistan. “It is family time,” Sarah said as Steve ran after Asher.
Black Friday spending was on pace to rise across the nation this year, a sign of the country’s growing economy. GlobalData, a London-based market research consultancy, put out a news release Friday indicating Black Friday spending would rise by about 5.7 percent over 2017, landing somewhere in the ballpark of $59.6 billion.
“Growth is coming from more people shopping for Black Friday, with strong rises in participation among lower-middle and lower-income consumers,” Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, said in the news release. “People are also spending more, with the average spend per head up by 5.3 percent over last year.”
The $59.6 billion projection represents 8.3 percent of the $717.45 billion the National Retail Federation expects American consumers to spend on holiday gifts over the entirety of November and December this year. That figure, on the low end of the federation’s projection range, would be a 4.3 increase over spending in 2017. Sales last year grew 5.3 percent over 2016, the best growth rate since 2010, when the country was emerging from recession.
“Thanks to a healthy economy and strong consumer confidence, we believe that this holiday season will continue to reflect the growth we’ve seen over the past year,” NRF president and CEO Matthew Shay said in a news release.
Innovation also may be contributing to sales growth. Brick-and-mortar stores have worked hard to prove they can counter the competition from Amazon. From Macy’s to Target and Walmart, retailers are blending their online and store shopping experience with new tools such as digital maps on smartphones and more options for shoppers to buy online and pick up at the stores.
Kohl’s has an app that lets customers take photos of products anywhere and find similar items at the department store. Customers at Walmart and some other stores can now skip lines and do their checkout with salespeople in store aisles.
Amber Wilson, senior visual manager at Free People, said the clothes store at Cherry Creek has seen the strong economy help the store “make its numbers.” She is confident the holiday season will continue the upward trend.
“We have a lot of promos. We’re so excited,” Wilson said. “One of our biggest successes is having a thoughtful team put together.”
What does Wilson expect to be popular this holiday season? “Sparkles and layers, coziness. That’s kind of our jam here at Free People.”
Attic Salt — a combination clothes, accessories and gifts shop at Park Meadows — had a strong morning Friday, manager Jessica Petersen said. The store reopened three weeks ago after expanding by a couple hundred square feet. It was offering “buy one, get one 50 percent off” deals on everything in the store.
“I’m doing better this year,” Petersen said. “I feel like there has been better early traffic. But I have more inventory.”
On a day of discounts, it’s important not to discount the little things that contribute to retail success. The Best Buy store across from Park Meadows had a healthy line when it opened at 8 a.m., manager Josh Mecham said. It was offering “door-buster” deals on numerous items, including TVs, video game consoles and smart home accessories. Those deals lured shoppers, to be sure, but Mecham noted it didn’t hurt that Friday was sunny, clear and nice for a late fall day.