PLAGUE IS REAL DEAL
Black Friday goes vitually
For most of the past decade, Emmanuel Merced has treated Black Friday like an elite sport, camping outside stores with his brother to snag premium electronics at insanely low door-buster prices.
The East Harlem man lined up early outside the Best Buy on Lexington Ave. and 86th St. last year in the bitter cold and even made national news doing so in 2011.
This year, he is staying home.
“No deal is worth catching the virus,” Merced, 36, told the Daily News.
“It was always a fun thing to do. The holidays come around, and you want to see what you can get for your family. But I can’t put anybody I love at risk,” he explained. “Better safe than sorry.”
He said the crowds, camaraderie and circus-like atmosphere were always part of the fun – and they’re off the table this Thanksgiving weekend.
“I’ll definitely miss it,” he said, wistfully. “If there’s a [coronavirus] cure and everything, hopefully we’ll be out there again next year.”
But even though the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade are closed to live spectators this year and Santa visits have gone contactless, Black Friday is far from canceled.
It’s getting staggered and spread out like never before, with almost all the best deals served up online, experts said.
“This is the first time I can remember seeing real Black Friday savings hitting early. Not just stuff to build hype, but actual great deals,” DealNews consumer analyst Julie Ramhold told The News.
As an example, she pointed to the TCL 55inch 4K Roku Smart TV that Walmart started selling for $148 on Nov. 11 as part of its early Black Friday event. It sold out fast and now goes for around $279 elsewhere.
Many of Walmart’s best deals are being advertised as “online only” this year. Others were set to be online at least two days ahead
of showing up in brick-and-mortar stores.
“This year more than ever, there’s no reason to shop in stores to get a deal,” Ramhold said.
Walmart along with Target, Best Buy and Kohl’s all announced early that they planned to remain closed on Thanksgiving Day because of the pandemic – a departure from last year.
“Black Friday isn’t just one day this year — it’s months long,” Best Buy said when it started offering holiday deals last month.
The consumer electronics behemoth said “nearly all” of its Black Friday deals were due to be unlocked online by Nov. 22.
Kmart stores in the metro area were set to open at 9 a.m. Thanksgiving Day and close at 7 p.m., but the retailer started offering online Black Friday deals weeks ago.
Walmart said it would open stores a 5 a.m. on Black Friday, but it was adamant it won’t tolerate the types of stampedes that typically make headlines.
“Customers will form a single, straight line” and face “metering” to limit in-store capacity, the company said. “Health Ambassadors will be placed at entrances to greet customers and remind them to put on a mask.”
Experts said the exact when, where and how most people will end up doing the bulk of their holiday shopping remains a moving target this year as coronavirus infections continue to grow.
“Some of what happens could be contingent on where things are with community spread and cases” in the coming days and weeks, Katherine Cullen, a senior director with the National Retail Federation told The News.
“We’re not putting out a forecast for the Thanksgiving weekend, like we usually do,” she said. “The situation is changing so quickly … We didn’t want to put out a number that would quickly feel irrelevant or irresponsible.”
Still, it’s clear many consumers did start shopping early, she said, pointing to a recent survey that found 60% of consumers said they’d already started their holiday buying by the first week of November, compared with 56% last year and 49% a decade ago.
Cullen said she’s “cautiously optimistic” the season will be strong overall.
“For the first 10 months of the year, retail sales were actually up 6%, and consumers are saying they have a lot of shopping left to do,” she explained. “We have seen a lot of resilience from consumers.”
Americans typically spend about onethird of their holiday budgets during the Black Friday weekend, Cullen said.
Last year, 189.6 million consumers shopped Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, she said.
A recent survey of 4,012 consumers conducted by Deloitte found that many will be spending their money differently and more cautiously for the holidays this year.
Shoppers plan to spend an average of $1,387 per household, down 7% from 2019, the survey found.
Nearly 51% of holiday shoppers reported feeling anxious about shopping in-store, Deloitte said.
As expected, money spent on holiday travel will plummet, with spending on social activities away from home expected to drop 34% year over year, the survey reported.
Spending on home-based celebrations is expected to pick up some of the slack and rise 12% to $435, Deloitte said.
“As travel spend declines, retailers will likely benefit, and should receive a higher percentage of total holiday spend,” Rod Sides, a vice chairman at Deloitte, said.
And many experts agreed some shoppers simply won’t be deterred when it comes to shopping in person.
“I’m a realist. There’s a part of me that’s still expecting some absolutely bananas story about people shopping in stores. I fully expect there will be some kind of crazy Black Friday story,” Ramhold said.
“So many people are so used to treating it like an epic, free-for-all event,” she said.