Eutrusca
26-11-2005, 15:16
COMMENTARY: Surely this sort of insanity is limited to a handful of the truly demented??? :headbang:
Dawn Rush Hints at Strong Start to Holiday Sales (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/26/business/26retail.html?th&emc=th)
By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: November 26, 2005
At 12:05 a.m. yesterday, moments into the earliest store opening on the busiest shopping day of the year, the beleaguered employees at the CompUSA on 57th Street in Manhattan laid down some ground rules: no more pushing and no more grabbing deeply discounted merchandise out of the hands of other customers.
"Civilized! Civilized!" implored one employee, as he dumped a cardboard box full of computer equipment into the outstretched hands of two dozen shoppers, who nevertheless lunged at one another to secure some of the limited supply of wireless adapters and Internet cards.
"For an outsider, this must seem nuts," confessed Mala Mathur, 25, who emerged from the scrum with a hard drive (regularly $150, on sale for $50). "But for us," she said of her fellow early risers, "it's perfectly natural."
Across the country, millions of Americans mobbed discount stores, raced into suburban malls and swarmed downtown shopping districts in a retail ritual that appeared to set a record for sleep deprivation.
Merchants, eager to lure large crowds, opened even earlier than last year - by an hour (at Wal-Mart), six hours (at CompUSA) and even a day (at Kmart).
Official tallies of how much people bought yesterday will not be available until Sunday, at the earliest. But initial reports from retail executives, who monitor the day's sales by the hour for clues about the health of the holiday shopping season, suggested a strong start.
"There are definitely more people out there," said John Barbour, the president of Toys "R" Us, which unlocked the doors at more than 100 stores before a scheduled 6 a.m. opening to accommodate larger-than-usual crowds.
Pam Kohn, Wal-Mart's senior vice president for operations for the Southeast, said foot traffic inside the chain's 3,500 stores suggested that "it's going to be a good day" - a relief for the discount giant, which stumbled badly on the same day last year.
Retailers had been fretting about the holiday season, speculating that higher gas and home heating prices, combined with the upheaval wrought by the three hurricanes that swept through the Gulf Coast and Florida, would pinch consumer budgets on what has become the biggest shopping day of the year (a title held, until 2003, by the Saturday before Christmas, according to ShopperTrak, a market research firm).
So to ensure a respectable season, retailers dangled a long list of incentives, from free cordless phones to $20 gift cards with a purchase, all abruptly ending around noon, when less generous discounts kicked in. Even Saks Fifth Avenue joined in: it offered 40 percent off selected Juicy Couture and Kate Spade handbags all morning.
Employees at Old Navy handed out cranberry and vanilla chip breakfast bars to shoppers in San Francisco, while Fortunoff, a jewelry and home furnishings chain in the metropolitan New York area, hired a team of masseurs to rub down customers on beds in the home department.
Stores are putting a greater emphasis on the day after Thanksgiving because they find it strongly influences decisions about where to shop for the rest of the holiday season. Deep discounts, in particular, they say, create the impression that a retailer is offering better values than competitors. "If we don't have the right doorbusters we don't have a good Christmas," said Ron Gregory, district manager for Sears in Chicago.
In Columbus, Ohio, Janet Roads, a 43-year-old public school administrator, said she left the house at dawn to shave a few dollars from the electronics her family covets: an MP3 player for her son and a DVD surround-sound music system for her husband.
In Atlanta, Mesha Mullen, a 23-year-old librarian, recruited six family members to wait in lines outside Target, Best Buy and Wal-Mart. But the plan hit a snag: her sister-in-law did not arrive until 4 a.m., leaving her No. 300 in a line outside of Wal-Mart and unlikely to find any $378 laptops left inside.
"We're all pretty mad about that," Ms. Mullen said.
With the Microsoft Xbox 360 video game system sold out at dozens of chains - "No more Xbox! I repeat, none!," one Toys "R" Us employee shouted all morning - consumers turned to the season's remaining must-have toys: Dora the Explorer, the cartoon character whose line of play kitchens and singing dolls has taken the preschool set by storm; Bratz dolls, whose funky clothes and curvy figures have dislodged Barbie from wish lists; and all things LeapFrog, the educational toy maker, whose computerized pen, called the Fly, has become an unexpected hit.
Top sellers for adults this year include cashmere sweaters and scarves and, as in every year in recent memory, electronics. Four major chains advertised a 15-inch L.C.D. flat-panel television on the covers of their circulars, with each jostling for the lowest price. Circuit City won, offering a Polaroid model for $187.99, a penny less than Target.
Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail consulting firm, said he watched all morning as consumers carted the bargain TV sets out of Wal-Mart, Best Buy and BJ's Wholesale Club stores. The prices, he said, have finally dipped below the "magic price points" (like $200 for the 15-inch L.C.D.) that have kept the technology out of reach of middle-income consumers.
Dave Perron, executive vice president for merchandising at Staples, said "electronics and digital have been the big sellers." A 19-inch Samsung L.C.D. computer monitor for $199 and a Hewlett-Packard digital camera for $78 "have done extremely well," he said.
[ This article is two pages long. To read the rest of the article go here (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/26/business/26retail.html?pagewanted=2&th&emc=th). ]
Dawn Rush Hints at Strong Start to Holiday Sales (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/26/business/26retail.html?th&emc=th)
By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: November 26, 2005
At 12:05 a.m. yesterday, moments into the earliest store opening on the busiest shopping day of the year, the beleaguered employees at the CompUSA on 57th Street in Manhattan laid down some ground rules: no more pushing and no more grabbing deeply discounted merchandise out of the hands of other customers.
"Civilized! Civilized!" implored one employee, as he dumped a cardboard box full of computer equipment into the outstretched hands of two dozen shoppers, who nevertheless lunged at one another to secure some of the limited supply of wireless adapters and Internet cards.
"For an outsider, this must seem nuts," confessed Mala Mathur, 25, who emerged from the scrum with a hard drive (regularly $150, on sale for $50). "But for us," she said of her fellow early risers, "it's perfectly natural."
Across the country, millions of Americans mobbed discount stores, raced into suburban malls and swarmed downtown shopping districts in a retail ritual that appeared to set a record for sleep deprivation.
Merchants, eager to lure large crowds, opened even earlier than last year - by an hour (at Wal-Mart), six hours (at CompUSA) and even a day (at Kmart).
Official tallies of how much people bought yesterday will not be available until Sunday, at the earliest. But initial reports from retail executives, who monitor the day's sales by the hour for clues about the health of the holiday shopping season, suggested a strong start.
"There are definitely more people out there," said John Barbour, the president of Toys "R" Us, which unlocked the doors at more than 100 stores before a scheduled 6 a.m. opening to accommodate larger-than-usual crowds.
Pam Kohn, Wal-Mart's senior vice president for operations for the Southeast, said foot traffic inside the chain's 3,500 stores suggested that "it's going to be a good day" - a relief for the discount giant, which stumbled badly on the same day last year.
Retailers had been fretting about the holiday season, speculating that higher gas and home heating prices, combined with the upheaval wrought by the three hurricanes that swept through the Gulf Coast and Florida, would pinch consumer budgets on what has become the biggest shopping day of the year (a title held, until 2003, by the Saturday before Christmas, according to ShopperTrak, a market research firm).
So to ensure a respectable season, retailers dangled a long list of incentives, from free cordless phones to $20 gift cards with a purchase, all abruptly ending around noon, when less generous discounts kicked in. Even Saks Fifth Avenue joined in: it offered 40 percent off selected Juicy Couture and Kate Spade handbags all morning.
Employees at Old Navy handed out cranberry and vanilla chip breakfast bars to shoppers in San Francisco, while Fortunoff, a jewelry and home furnishings chain in the metropolitan New York area, hired a team of masseurs to rub down customers on beds in the home department.
Stores are putting a greater emphasis on the day after Thanksgiving because they find it strongly influences decisions about where to shop for the rest of the holiday season. Deep discounts, in particular, they say, create the impression that a retailer is offering better values than competitors. "If we don't have the right doorbusters we don't have a good Christmas," said Ron Gregory, district manager for Sears in Chicago.
In Columbus, Ohio, Janet Roads, a 43-year-old public school administrator, said she left the house at dawn to shave a few dollars from the electronics her family covets: an MP3 player for her son and a DVD surround-sound music system for her husband.
In Atlanta, Mesha Mullen, a 23-year-old librarian, recruited six family members to wait in lines outside Target, Best Buy and Wal-Mart. But the plan hit a snag: her sister-in-law did not arrive until 4 a.m., leaving her No. 300 in a line outside of Wal-Mart and unlikely to find any $378 laptops left inside.
"We're all pretty mad about that," Ms. Mullen said.
With the Microsoft Xbox 360 video game system sold out at dozens of chains - "No more Xbox! I repeat, none!," one Toys "R" Us employee shouted all morning - consumers turned to the season's remaining must-have toys: Dora the Explorer, the cartoon character whose line of play kitchens and singing dolls has taken the preschool set by storm; Bratz dolls, whose funky clothes and curvy figures have dislodged Barbie from wish lists; and all things LeapFrog, the educational toy maker, whose computerized pen, called the Fly, has become an unexpected hit.
Top sellers for adults this year include cashmere sweaters and scarves and, as in every year in recent memory, electronics. Four major chains advertised a 15-inch L.C.D. flat-panel television on the covers of their circulars, with each jostling for the lowest price. Circuit City won, offering a Polaroid model for $187.99, a penny less than Target.
Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail consulting firm, said he watched all morning as consumers carted the bargain TV sets out of Wal-Mart, Best Buy and BJ's Wholesale Club stores. The prices, he said, have finally dipped below the "magic price points" (like $200 for the 15-inch L.C.D.) that have kept the technology out of reach of middle-income consumers.
Dave Perron, executive vice president for merchandising at Staples, said "electronics and digital have been the big sellers." A 19-inch Samsung L.C.D. computer monitor for $199 and a Hewlett-Packard digital camera for $78 "have done extremely well," he said.
[ This article is two pages long. To read the rest of the article go here (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/26/business/26retail.html?pagewanted=2&th&emc=th). ]