HOLIDAY RITUAL
Maintaining tradition: Shoppers out in droves looking for once-a-year deals Competition: Some retailers offer in-store-only sales to bring in the crowds
Sudhir Kulkarni of Cupertino was up and about bright and early Friday, spending $5,000 for a MacBook Air, a soundbar and a variety of other products at the San Jose Best Buy across from Valley Fair Mall.
He could have just as easily purchased the items from the retailer’s cornucopia of online Black Friday deals or from online behemoth Amazon.com. But like millions of other post-Thanksgiving traditionalists across the country, Kulkarni said he came to experience the buzz of shoppers buying new products and sharing insights on what to buy.
“I try to strike conversations with people, like, ‘Why are you buying that soundbar?’ ” Kulkarni said. “Having a good experience is as important as having a sexy new product.”
While Black Friday may not be the extravaganza it once was, with online shopping and many retailers getting an early Thanksgiving Day jump, that was the trend this year as many Bay Area shoppers were still out in droves Friday on the hunt for deals.
For friends Kelli Segers of Antioch and Stacy Chretien of Oakland, Black Friday shopping has become a holiday ritual. The pair met up at 5:30 a.m. at Kohl’s in Pleasant Hill to hunt for deals Friday morning, and by 6 a.m. they had filled a shopping cart. Both women said they typically spend between eight and 10 hours on Black Friday shopping together and accomplish about 90 percent of their holiday gift-buying for family and friends. They planned to go out to breakfast, hit up Ross and Bed, Bath & Beyond and then the sales at JC Penney and Macy’s.
They let nothing get in their way.
“Last year I had a surgical boot on, but she made me come out (to shop),” Chretien said, laughing. “I drove her around,” Seger said.
Segers believes Thanksgiving Day should be set aside for gathering with friends and family, but oth-
ers disagree. A line snaked around Best Buy in Dublin by 4:30 p.m. Thursday, and Brandon Caldwell, a manager at the Pleasant Hill Kohl’s store, said that about 400 people lined up Thursday evening prior to the store opening its doors at 5 p.m.
The crowds stayed through the night until about 3 a.m. and then started picking up again around 6 a.m., Caldwell said, but he expected Friday afternoon to draw many more.
Lines could be seen outside of Target stores around Northern California on Thursday night, where the big draw was televisions, family games and a slew of toys, especially LEGO, Pokémon and Nerf sets. The retailer opened doors at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving, then closed at midnight and reopened at 6 a.m. Friday. At Stoneridge Shopping Center in Pleasanton, the morning was quiet but crowds had flocked to the mall by the early afternoon, said director of marketing and business development Betsy Edwards.
Many people include Black Friday shopping as part of their Thanksgiving week traditions.
Like Segers and Chretien, Jun Enriquez and Julianne Paragas of Vallejo include Black Friday shopping as part of the Thanksgiving week traditions. They started their day at the Sunvalley Shopping Center in Concord at 5 a.m. It’s the second year they’ve made a day of it and, by about 10 a.m., they had bags full of gifts for family and friends.
“There’s a satisfaction in taking all the purchases home,” Paragas said.
For retailers that have had a tough year, Black Friday, and the rest of the holiday shopping season, will be crucial. Mike Johnson, a partner at the Deloitte auditing-consulting firm in San Francisco, said he expects strong spending, especially in the Bay Area, where unemployment is low and household incomes are high.
According to a survey from Deloitte, the average expected outlay on holiday shopping in the Bay Area is $1,478 per person, up from $1,330 in 2016, compared to national figures of $1,226 this year and $998 in 2016.
While people are still indeed shopping, the super long lines and mad rush of years past were largely absent in the Bay Area. That could be because there is a big shift in how people are buying holiday gifts, with many using mobile devices and increasingly buying online, research shows. And retailers have been offering Black Friday deals for weeks already.
In the Westfield Valley Fair mall in west San Jose, throngs of shoppers packed the mall but lines were far and few between on Friday morning.
The exception was at Morphe, an affordable cosmetics brand which opened its doors in Valley Fair last Sunday. Selling brushes as low as $5, the make-up retailer saw a line of at least 30 people, many of them teenage girls, according to Mario Dumindin, the store’s head of operations.
“It’s been hard to manage, but it’s a good problem to have,” said Dumindin, who ushered people inside in small numbers.
Another line formed outside Din Tai Fung, a Taiwanese dim sum chain, but for a different reason. As cooks and servers prepped behind its glass walls, hungry shoppers queued for the doors to open at 10:30 a.m.
“So far, (the traffic’s) been good,” said Ami Yao, 32, from Japan, who was in line outside the popular eatery with her mother.
Traffic in the Valley Fair parking lot certainly seemed as heavy as any in past years, according to some shoppers.
“It’s a pain to park here,” said Rick Bales, 59, of San Jose.
Many people are combining online and in-store buying. Concord resident Victoria Gauthier and her sister Tracey Blackwood wake up early each year on Black Friday and try to complete as much holiday gift buying as they can. Gauthier’s husband keeps a spreadsheet of items on the family wish list so they can compare prices online and in stores and get the best deals, Gauthier said.
Some stores are offering in-store-only discounts to lure people in to shop. Lululemon was offering up to 70 percent off items in its stores — a deal that brought Ashley Smith of Chico out to that company’s Walnut Creek store in Broadway Plaza on Friday with her daughter. Smith typically shops online, but as a “diehard” Lululemon fan, she was eager to take advantage of the deal while she’s in the Bay Area visiting family this week, she said.
“I’m so excited.”