Black Friday was so 2012. This year it’s all about Black Thursday.
With many of the largest U.S. retail stores opening their doors on Thanksgiving Day, potential shoppers have the opportunity to snag deals before their turkey and pie have time to digest.
In Savannah, many retail chains plan to follow suit and begin their sales Thursday evening — Best Buy, Marshalls and Wal-Mart, to name a few.
The Oglethorpe Mall will, for the first time, lift the gates at 8 p.m., with 71 stores open, including the major department stores Belk, Macy’s and J.C. Penney. The rest of the stores will open in waves at midnight and 6 a.m.
Paul Baker, the mall’s senior general manager, said the trend toward opening earlier has been developing for years.
“As the opening has kind of crept into the early morning, it sort of made less and less sense,” said Baker. “I think the real question is whether it’s going to generate additional sales or push sales that would’ve occurred later into Thanksgiving Day.”
He called the mall’s 8 p.m. opening “uncharted territory” but thinks it will become a normal occurrence. “It’s going to be pretty exciting. You see a lot of mixed reaction on both sides of the equation.”
Tanger Outlet Center in Hilton Head, S.C., will open at 10 p.m., with the majority of its 90 outlets open throughout the night. General manager LaDonna Shamlou said last year’s early opening was successful.
“There are so many people who don’t want to start at midnight, that want to shop in that 10-12 hour,” said Shamlou. “We have experienced in years past that even when they opened at 10 p.m., that people were lining up early. It’s really our shoppers who dictate what we do.”
The National Retail Federation has reported that approximately 33 million Americans plan to shop on Thanksgiving Day this year. Of those surveyed, 69.2 percent reported that they had shopped online or in stores on Thanksgiving in 2012 as well.
Twenty-six-year-old Amber Smith considers herself a habitual early-bird shopper, having attended Black Friday events for at least five years.
“It’s just the thrill. Last year I got a 32-inch flatscreen for $198 from Wal-Mart,” said Smith who had waited in line from midnight until 5 a.m.. She said she hasn’t decided where she’ll go this year, though Macy’s is a contender.
Not everyone is thrilled by the earlier shopping.
Tonya Hooks, 53, will be part of that second wave of shoppers who show up Friday morning. She and her daughter-in-law have made a tradition of shopping on Black Friday at Macy’s for the last three years. She doesn’t like that stores are undercutting Thanksgiving.
“I just want those people to be home with their families,” said Hooks.
She’s spending Thanksgiving in Macon with plans to return to Oglethorpe Mall Friday at 7 a.m. to get some holiday shopping done.
“We’re not the ones who go to the electronics store and camp out. We’re looking for the Belk’s shoe closet and clothing deals,” said Hooks. “We buy one for ourselves and maybe one for someone else.”
Her daughter-in-law Delaina Hooks added: “Or maybe two for yourself and one for someone else.”
Baker, the Oglethorpe Mall manager, predicts enough people will show up at the earlier time.
“I think we’ll have a tremendous turnout at 8 p.m. (and) a steady, consistent traffic flow throughout the night,” he said.
Consumer Outlook
Whether the earlier openings will equate to more sales remains to be seen. Ben McKay , a research specialist at the Bureau of Business Research and Economic Development with Georgia Southern University, said consumer expectations seem to be about the same this year as they were in 2012.
“This year’s looking like it’s going to be slightly better than last year in terms of some of the data we’ve looked at,” said McKay. “I’m thinking about a 3 to 4 percent increase in overall sales for the total holiday season.”
In a phone survey conducted last year by McKay and his team, Georgia shoppers said they planned to spend about $970 on gifts and buy for 10 people.
“Black Friday is going to be slightly off from where it’s been in the past because everything’s happening so late this year,” he said. “Bargain hunters are already hard at work.”
Of course, some of those bargain hunters will be online instead of in line.
Husband and wife Philip and Michelle Neeper, both stationed at Hunter Army Airfield, said they’ll do their shopping on the Internet.
Philip said he tried to do Black Friday a few years ago in Syracuse, N.Y., but found the crowds overwhelming.
“I did it once,” Neeper said, “I’ll never do it again.”