Black Friday as good as ever this year, local business owners say

Shopping holiday extends into Small Business Saturday today; Cyber Monday to come

Gordon McKamey, Gene Ware, Sanford Elrod, and Carlton Lively, from left, wait in massage recliners for their wives outside of JC Penney during Black Friday shopping at Hamilton Place Mall on Friday, Nov. 27, 2015, in Chattanooga, Tenn.
Gordon McKamey, Gene Ware, Sanford Elrod, and Carlton Lively, from left, wait in massage recliners for their wives outside of JC Penney during Black Friday shopping at Hamilton Place Mall on Friday, Nov. 27, 2015, in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Late into the afternoon on Black Friday, the faint-of-heart found their way home, or at least to a bench to rest weary legs.

But the crowds didn't ebb. They swarmed the malls and the shops and the big-box retailers, and they jockeyed for parking spaces into the evening.

Anecdotally, local business was as good as ever this year, maybe even a little bit better.

"Crowds have been good," said Shawn Skelly, store manager at Bed Bath and Beyond in Hixson, on Friday.

His store, which opened at 6 a.m. Friday, remained busy even into the early evening.

The National Retail Federation predicted a total 135.8 million shoppers would hit retailers over the course of this weekend, which is one of the largest shopping weekends of the year. Around 30 million shoppers are estimated to have shopped on Thanksgiving Day, while nearly 100 million were expected to shop on Black Friday. Early National Retail Federation Black Friday sales numbers will be released on Sunday.

But the Thanksgiving weekend shopping holiday isn't over because Black Friday has passed.

Small Business Saturday - a day geared toward local businesses - is today, and Cyber Monday is just around the corner. American holiday shoppers are expected to spend nearly $600 each on gifts this year, and more than $800 each on all holiday items, including decorations.

The holiday shopping season is expected to bring in more than $630.5 billion in sales, roughly 20 percent of the retail industry's year-long haul.

Black Friday

Catharine Wells, marketing director at Hamilton Place mall operator CBL Properties, said she saw crowds firsthand overnight Thursday into Friday, and "just from sight alone, I think we all agree that we definitely had more traffic last night than typical.

"We had a lot of shoppers last night," she said Friday afternoon. "We judge it by not just the traffic inside the mall, but really the parking lot, how far out the cars are, so we know when we reach capacity."

She said it will be months before mall officials know exact numbers from Black Friday shopping.

Meanwhile, at Northgate Mall - the Hixson mall also owned by CBL Properties - it was a similar story.

"They definitely experienced the same thing," Wells said.

Nationally, National Retail Federation officials said Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day crowds were potentially record-breaking, even with many retailers offering online deals and rolling out sales as early as the beginning of this week.

"The excitement continued into Thursday as reports of long lines outside stores on Thanksgiving and Black Friday were matched by reports of record-breaking online sales," said Matthew Shay, NRF president and CEO, in a news release.

Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday

Though Black Friday owns the lion's share of Thanksgiving shopping traffic, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday draw significant traffic of their own.

And they provide additional sales boosts for retailers far and near.

Maddie Rich, a sales associate at Luxe Boutique Chattanooga, said Friday afternoon with a store full of customers buzzing behind her that Thanksgiving weekend is huge for the locally owned shop.

And Small Business Saturday is a big part of that.

"Last year, we didn't do as good as we did on Black Friday, but we still did a very hefty amount of sales," she said. "We pretty much tripled what we usually do on a normal Saturday, so very good."

Luxe Boutique ran buy-two-get-one-free sales on Black Friday, but will run special, once-a-year slash sales today.

"It means between certain hours we'll do different sales," said Rich. "So between 12 and 1 p.m., all shoes are half off. Or between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., you would buy one item and get one item free. It's just a different sale for every hour. We just do that one for Small Business [Saturday]."

The Thanksgiving shopping holiday wraps up Monday, meanwhile, on the Cyber Monday online shopping holiday, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.

According to the National Retail Federation, 126 million shoppers took advantage of the online shopping holiday last year, most of them hitting early morning deals.

Online giant Amazon.com said in a news release this week that Cyber Monday is historically the busiest day of the year for the Seattle-based company.

Shoppers last year bought 43 million items through Amazon.com on Cyber Monday, "which is a record-breaking 500 items per second," company officials said. Earlier this year, Amazon officials announced the hiring of thousands of seasonal workers for the holidays, including at its Chattanooga and Charleston, Tenn., fulfillment centers.

Contact staff writer Alex Green at agreen@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6480.

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