By Nikki Baird, Managing Partner
11/27/2007
Was a Black Friday special edition my idea? What was I thinking?!? I hate crowds. I actively avoid them – I find out when everyone else is going to be there, and then I go at the other time.
So here I am faced with the idea of going out shopping at the exact same time that everybody else is going shopping – not a good mix. I toyed briefly with the notion of getting up at 4am – when the first stores in the Denver area opened (as long as you don’t count the ones that opened from 9pm-12am Thursday night) – just to see what kind of nut cases actually got up that early for “doorbuster” specials. But then the L-tryptophan from the turkey kicked in, and I knew there was no way I was going to get up that early. Not to mention, up until the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Colorado has enjoyed unseasonably warm temperatures – nice, balmy mid-70’s (or low- to mid-20’s for you Celsius types). A big arctic cold front pushed through on Wednesday, and while I was not awake to confirm it, at 4am on Friday morning, I’m guessing it was somewhere between 18-20 degrees. That’s in Fahrenheit, thank you very much.
To be fair, my take on Black Friday Denver is based on a very suburban market. I live south of Denver metro, and most of the locations I went to were in Littleton, near the Southwest Plaza Mall. About as “suburbia” as you can get. To get a reasonably fair picture, I set myself four objectives at four different locations, and to make things interesting, I dragged my family along with me. Here’s how we fared:
Kohl’s at Kipling and 470, 10am. Ayiyi. If this is how every place is going to be, I’m not going to make it, was my thought as we pulled into the parking lot. It was full. We ended up parking by the Chili’s at the far end of the parking lot and trudging across two-way mid-lot traffic and the entire Kohl’s parking lot to get to the front. Our objective for this store: 1-2 pairs of men’s jeans and a Kohl’s gift card. We entered the store and headed for the men’s department. Along the way, we passed one of two pods of checkstands at Kohl’s, and they were all full. There was a little chain cordoning off the line to the registers, which was one line feeding the 8 registers in the pod. It was wholly inadequate. The line went all the way down the aisle, made a 90-degree turn, and then went all the way down that aisle to the back of the store, where people queuing up were starting to turn that corner. I didn’t count, but I think it is no exaggeration to say that there were 75 people in that line.
OK, so much for the jeans. We headed to the back of the store to the customer service desk to see if we could get a gift card there. Apparently, other people had started to realize that the two registers at the customer service desk were open, and by the time we got there, the line for each was 10-deep. I very badly wanted to take a picture to share, but the place was crawling with employees, so I chickened out. We left, bagless, objectives unmet, walking past the line on the other side of the store that was only slightly shorter than the one on the side where we came in. On our way out, two ladies were bickering about whether it was worth it to get in the line, and in the parking lot about one-third of the people walking out had no bags. This one store could very likely have justified an investment in handhelds with cardswipes and printers on the lost sales from the people walking out of the store empty-handed on Black Friday alone. Grade for our experience at this Kohl’s store: D-.
Target at Bowles and Wadsworth, 10:30am. The parking lot was as bad as expected, but once we were inside, it wasn’t so bad. I had the unfortunate experience of being in this Target on December 23, 2006, when my brother needed to do all of his Christmas shopping in one day, and I have to say, it was busier then. Our objective in this store: an Audiovox portable DVD player featured in the Target ad for $84. We squeezed past all the people in the media section and headed over to electronics, where the DVD player was nowhere to be found. But they did have all of the secured cases for the video games open, so that you didn’t have to wait for someone to open it if there was a game you wanted to buy. While waiting for my husband to finish looking at Wii games, a red-shirted employee walked up and asked if he could help us find anything. I mentioned the product (I didn’t bring the ad with me), and he knew exactly what I was talking about. He walked us over to the men’s department, where a stack of them sat just off the aisle, along with an “accessories” set for $8. We picked up one of each, and headed to the front.
Not every register was open, but they didn’t need them all open. I picked one of 2 registers that had absolutely no line and paid in no time at all. Objective met with minimum fuss, and no wait at the checkout. What more can you ask for? Target gets an A.
Best Buy at Southlands Parkway and Wadsworth, 10:45am. Parking lot looked busy from the street, but when we pulled in, there were plenty of spaces and we parked about halfway down the row from the front. The store was definitely busy, but the space that they had cordoned off for the line was much longer than they needed. Our objective for this store: a wireless remote for running Powerpoint from my laptop. I know, not exactly part of the “spirit of giving”, but even though we’re in the market for an HD TV (finally), we’re not buying it here because we can get it cheaper online.
We navigate to the computer peripherals, and find only one option, which doesn’t have a feature I was looking for. So we wander past the video game department, where my husband found a video game we had on the list to get our son (passing by several employees, and not having to wait a moment to find someone to open the case for us so we could pick up the game). I distracted the kids up front by the LP stand while my husband stood in line to pay. Ten registers – the max – were open, and the line moved very quickly. My husband was perplexed by having to both give his PIN and sign for a debit transaction, but all in all it was pretty smooth. Our original objective was not met, but we did find something else we were looking for, and we were able to get in and get out quickly. So, grade for this Best Buy store: B.
Apple Store, Aspen Grove “Lifestyle Center” on Santa Fe, 11:10am. Target and Best Buy are both located next to, if not on the property of, Southwest Plaza Mall (your traditional, enclosed mall). That parking lot, as expected, was pretty full, though I could not bring myself to go in and verify what it looked like inside. Aspen Grove, where the Apple Store is located, by contrast, is one of those newer concepts, a “lifestyle center”. It’s also open-air, and even by 11am, the temperature was not more than 25 degrees (uh, -4 Celsius), and it was starting to snow. This parking lot was not even as full as you might see on a regular (warm, sunny) weekend.
The Apple Store was busy, but not as busy as we’ve seen it in the past. We didn’t really have an objective here, we just wanted to see what Apple’s deals were and if anyone had shown up. But lo and behold, they had the wireless remote I was looking for for my laptop. The guy stationed by the computers rung me up, emailed me my receipt, and we left, an objective unexpectedly met (sorry, Best Buy!). Grade for Apple: an A (my husband, a Mac fanatic, wanted it to be an A+, noting that we didn’t need to go to a register to get rung up, but I stick by my A. If they had been even busier and I had the same experience, then I might have added the +).
So, Black Friday – if it is indeed a day that retailers get into the black, which I have my doubts given some of the deals – in Denver was good, but not great. There were lots of people but not massive crowds. Some retailers, like Target, were prepared for the worst of rushes, and others, like Kohl’s, weren’t prepared for even the so-so crowds that they got. I don’t know that the weather here in Denver had a huge impact – rather, it drove people primarily to indoor locations, and not outdoor ones. In the grand scheme of things, as oil price concerns, credit crunches, and general concerns for the economy and consumer spending swirl through the air like so many chilling snowflakes, I think this Black Friday will come out as slightly better than expected, but not nearly as good as we’ve seen in the past.
The thing I can’t help wondering, and that I’ll leave you with today is, how long before Black Friday is just a media event, rather than a big sales event for retailers? With things like gift cards and eCommerce shifting the spread of consumer holiday spending, we may yet see the day when Black Friday is just another day…
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