Big Black Friday crowds hit stores for Thanksgiving shopping
Bargain-hungry shoppers didn't let the rain, chill or tryptophan keep them away from doorbuster deals Thursday night.
Despite outcry that several major retail chains would once again open on Thanksgiving, some 16,000 people piled into Macy's Herald Square flagship when it opened at 5 p.m. That's roughly 1,000 more people than last year, when the store opened an hour later.
At a New Jersey Target, a line of 600 people started building at noon — and outlasted pockets of rain — ahead of its 6 p.m. opening. Deal seekers also lined up outside wet J.C. Penney and Best Buy stores across the Northeast, waiting for their 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. openings.
Once they got inside, they were ready to spend.
"The most encouraging trend I'm seeing is while guests were in our stores shopping for those big doorbuster items, they continued to shop multiple categories," Target CEO Brian Cornell said Thursday night.
Popular deals included a 50-inch 4K TV set for less than $250, and a $10 oversize teddy bear that sold out. Shoppers were also scooping up Apple watches, Nerf and Lego toys, gaming systems, hoverboards and sleepwear.
"Our guests still enjoy shopping on Thanksgiving evening," Cornell said.
Millions of shoppers also filed into Wal-Mart's stores at 6 p.m., snatching up televisions, cookware, drones, toys and pajamas. Victoria's Secret and Urban Outfitters were also drawing large crowds, Dana Telsey, CEO of Telsey Advisory Group, told CNBC.
Several retailers, including Wal-Mart, Kohl's and Target, offered the same deals online that they did in stores. As of 5 p.m. Thursday, Adobe said retailers had rung up $1.15 billion in online sales, a 13.6 percent increase over last year.
At Target, both revenue and traffic were up double-digits as of 8:30 p.m., and the big-box retailer said Friday morning that the day ended up being its largest ever for Target.com. Thanksgiving was also one of the year's top online shopping days for Wal-Mart.
"The ones that are really making it easy for the customer and focusing on them will be the winners," Stacey Widlitz, president of SW Retail Advisors, told CNBC.
As is typical, much of the foot traffic slowed overnight. But Matthew Shay, CEO of the National Retail Federation, said Black Friday would be the "biggest day of the weekend."
"Overall, we think sales are going to be up, [and] consumers are going to spend more," he said, saying consumers entered the season feeling more confident. That was reflected in strong October sales numbers reported by the Commerce Department, he said.
Hundreds of guests shopped for Black Friday doorbuster deals at Target at the Black Friday At Target Dadeland South In Miami at Target Dadeland South on November 27, 2014 in Miami, Florida.
Gustavo Caballero | Getty Images for Target
Hundreds of guests shopped for Black Friday doorbuster deals at Target at the Black Friday At Target Dadeland South In Miami at Target Dadeland South on November 27, 2014 in Miami, Florida.
Black Friday deals have been seeping into turkey time for the past several years. The trend took off en masse back in 2013, when Macy's, Best Buy and J.C. Penney joined the likes of Target and Toys R Us in opening their stores after Thanksgiving dinner.
That movement has since accelerated, with retailers inching their start times earlier each year. This season, however, many retailers stuck with their prior-year plans, signaling what Jefferies analyst Daniel Binder said could be a "ceasefire" in the "arms race" to open earlier.
Other retailers and property owners changed their tack this season, partly in hopes of bringing some excitement back to Black Friday. That includes CBL & Associates, which closed nearly allof its 89 shopping centers until 6 a.m. Black Friday. At the Mall of America, all but three of its more than 520 stores — Macy's, Sears and the Crayola Experience — stayed dark.
"Black Friday historically has been such a great shopping day," CBL CEO Stephen Lebovitz told CNBC last month. "It's lost its luster because we've diluted it. ... We want to bring back Black Friday and make it fun."
The industry is torn on whether Thanksgiving store hours are worth the trouble for retailers, who incur additional payroll expenses when they opt in. In CBL's case, its tenants' sales were simply being spread out, Lebovitz said.
However, analysts generally agree that for retailers who have customers that are more price-sensitive, it makes sense to stay open. That's because many shoppers choose to spend on either Thanksgiving or Black Friday — meaning if a store is closed on Thursday, they're likely to head to a competitor instead.
Further depressing store traffic on Black Friday is shoppers' growing tendency to search for deals on the web. According to a prediction by Adobe Digital Insights, which measures 80 percent of all transactions from the top 100 U.S. retailers, online sales on Thanksgiving and Black Friday are expected to grow 15.6 percent and 11.3 percent, respectively.
Sales typically get off to a strong start when a retailer first opens its doors, then taper off as the night goes on. Traffic tends to pick up again early in the morning on Black Friday. Yet with consumers doing more shopping online, and with deals starting earlier in the season, it can be tough to gauge the success of a season during the spread-out sales event.
"Today's really the first step in the battle," Kevin Quigg, chief strategist at ACSI Funds, told CNBC. "The war is the entirety of the holiday season."
Despite the shifting nature of Black Friday, it is still seen being the busiest day of the season, according to ShopperTrak. Some 137.4 million people are expected to shop over the holiday weekend, with roughly three-fourths of them planning to do so on Black Friday, according to the National Retail Federation's consumer survey. That compares with 21 percent who said they would shop on Thanksgiving Day.