All good things must come to end — including, after nearly four years, my contributions to this column. “Retail Rap” will soon be forging on without me. This is the first of two final columns I’ll be contributing, and I’ll beg your indulgence if I wax nostalgic at times in this, column number 99, and […]
Best Buy
Retail Rap: Stocking Stuffers
With 2014 almost over, another holiday shopping season is drawing to a close. The looming question on everyone’s mind, of course, is whether holiday sales managed to live up to the (mostly) positive holiday forecasts from analysts and retail organizations.
As I mentioned in a previous column in Retail Rap, Black Friday landed with a resounding thud, failing to meet expectations and surprising most observers with underwhelming numbers. Given the fact that we didn’t see what we expected on Black Friday (and that the weeks since have been decent, but not remarkable), it seems like our post-season analysis will discover that the last week before Christmas—particularly the last pre-Christmas shopping weekend—will have been enormously important, and ultimately defining.
In this edition of Retail Rap, I discuss things that caught my eye during the holiday shopping season that I found particularly interesting, including discount dynamics, sector surprises, department storing and more.
Black Friday shopping frenzy creeps early and stays late this year
Bethany Clough / The Fresno Bee – Black Friday is different this year.
Not only is it really Black Thursday — also known as Thanksgiving — because so many stores are opening earlier than ever but the debate over it is louder than ever.
And Black Friday is not the traditional kickoff to the holiday shopping season anymore, with deals coming early and continuing well past the one day.
“Black Friday isn’t what Black Friday used to be. It’s bled into Thanksgiving,” says Phoenix-based retail consultant Jeff Green of Jeff Green Partners.
An estimated 140 million people will shop between Thursday and Sunday, about 61% of all people surveyed in a National Retail Federation/Prosper Insights & Analytics survey.
Black Friday 2014: West Michigan retailers announce Thanksgiving hours
Andrew Kuhn / MLive – GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Over the past two years, Black Friday has gained a solid six-hour foothold into Thanksgiving. This year, the line has moved from prime time to supper time. Most big box retailers and department stores, from Target to Kohl’s, will open at 6 p.m. on the holiday. […]
For earliest doorbuster deals, skip Thanksgiving dinner
Justine Griffin / Herald-Tribune – And we thought they couldn’t go any earlier.
Some of the nation’s largest retail chains — Walmart, Best Buy, Macy’s and nearly a dozen others — will open their doors earlier than ever on Thanksgiving Day this holiday season — to the chagrin of some workers stuck with that duty.
Leading the charge are Best Buy, Toys R Us and J.C. Penney, with electronics, toys and department stores offering doorbuster deals as early as 5 p.m.
Macy’s, Kohl’s, Target and Walmart will open their stores across the country at 6 p.m.
Retail watcher predicting a rash of store closings
Joan Verdon / The Seattle Times – The experts who keep track of store openings and closings have been forecasting for more than a decade that the day was coming when American retailers would have to pay for building way too many stores. That day of reckoning, some say, has arrived, with one retail watcher […]
