‘Black Friday’ drags through November amid tight U.S. inventories

CHICAGO, Nov. 24 (BUS) – Facing scarce year-end stocks and a shortage of workers, retailers are turning “Black Friday” into a month-long event.

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, said Monday that it has already started “Black Friday” sales, such as a $30 discount on AirPods and KidKraft dollhouses. Walmart, which will close its stores on Thanksgiving for the second year in a row, said it will offer the same discounts in stores only on Fridays.

Target on Sunday kicked off its Black Friday sales, such as up to 30% off Samsung and TCL flat-panel TVs, and 50% off headphones. Target said Monday it will keep nearly all of its 1,900 stores closed on Thanksgiving from now on.

Thanksgiving weekend had earlier kicked off the US shopping season with “closed door” discounts that had consumers queuing for blocks outside traditional stores across the country on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. In recent years, in-store shopping has faded on Black Friday, with online sales on that day exceeding traditional sales for the first time in 2019.

This year, retailers began promoting holiday “deals” online as early as September, because an ongoing supply chain crisis threatened to prevent them from bringing new merchandise from Asia to the United States in the weeks leading up to the Christmas holidays. But the deals are modest. Retailers are expected to make 5% to 25% price cuts on Friday, just a bit deeper than the 5% to 10% cuts they offered in October, according to the Adobe Digital Economy Index.

Best Buy said Tuesday during an earnings conference that the start of Black Friday deals in mid-October hurt quarterly profit margins.

Retailers increasingly reduced store hours on Black Friday as shoppers flock to online shopping. Will the discounts be as prevalent and deep as they have been in the past few years? “No, not if the demand for the product is high and the supply is low — there is no reason to promote discounts,” asked Marshall Cohen, senior industry analyst at NPD Group.

Stores are trying to berate the public for thinking ‘Get it now or it’s gone,’ said 70-year-old artist Maggie Smith of Tucson, Arizona.

According to a Reuters/IPSOS poll of nearly 1,000 people, more than a fifth of shoppers said they primarily plan to buy gifts online this year, while only 12% said they would primarily shop in stores. Online sales on Black Friday itself are expected to increase 5% to $9.5 billion, according to the Adobe Digital Economy Index, Reuters reports.

Both Walmart and Target said they would invest more in same-day options, including the ability for shoppers to pick up ordered merchandise online.

But fulfilling quick orders online can strain the workforce of retailers at a time when warehouse workers are in short supply.

“We’re seeing twice the time for those shifts and pay increases, but then it’s going to be painful,” said Andy Halliwell, senior director of retail at consultancy Publicis Sapient. “This will come from retailers’ margins.”

JCPenney, owned by Simon Property Group and Brookfield Asset Management (BAMa.TO), wants to hire 3,000 supply chain workers in its distribution centers as well as 25,000 seasonal partners. The retailer is offering $2,000 retention bonuses to select supply chain partners at certain locations.

Macy’s, which plans to hire 71,000 seasonal workers, said nearly a third of those employees will work in fulfillment centers across the country, and Kohl’s said in July that it would award bonuses up to $400 to hourly store and supply chain partners that remain stuck. for the festive season.

Sure enough, some retailers said they were preparing brick-and-mortar stores for a comeback, and said they had enough stock.

“We’re seeing our customers return to in-store shopping,” said William White, Walmart’s chief marketing officer in the US. White also said Walmart has “more than doubled” its toy collection.

For Mark Evan, a 23-year-old student in Philadelphia, going to the stores isn’t a tradition he plans to ditch, though he said he’ll be doing most of his online shopping as soon as possible this week.

“I still go out on Black Friday, just to do some casual shopping and hang out with friends.”

HF