Shoppers…the countdown begins

Gray skies greeted Black Friday shoppers in the Tri-parish area, but pre-dawn and early morning sales offered a sunny outlook for retailers hoping to boost business this Christmas shopping season.

Buying activity on Friday depended heavily upon advertised deals and location.

Major retailers enticed customers with discounts on specific products and opened their doors long before the idea of leftover turkey sandwiches hit the day after Thanksgiving.

Small business owners, on the other hand, waited their turn to greet shoppers that overcame the initial frenzy and started to focus their gift giving efforts.

“They don’t head to this part of town until around 3 p.m.,” said Tammy Parfait, manager of CATO on Grand Caillou Road at about 1:30 p.m. “They go to the other side [of Houma where there are large concentrations of national chain stores on Martin Luther King Boulevard and at the Southland Mall] first.”

Parfait said her store’s business is historically busier the day before Thanksgiving than the day after, but had no explanation as to why that seems to be the case.

It was about 10:15 a.m. when Quiiser Nizar, who operates Silverman Jewelry in the Southland Mall, commented on Black Friday traffic. “It’s unusual,” he said. “People get up so early and there is a big crowd. So far it’s been exciting.”

Shoe Show manager Riki Matthews said that he saw what is typically a week’s worth of sales made in his store just on Friday morning.

Mall manager Dawn Becker said that the crowd there was larger than it had been during the past few Black Friday’s, but did not say if she thought it was due to an improving economy or because rain outside pushed consumers indoors for a variety of stores beneath one roof. “Typically, the mall seems to be the last place people stop. We’ve had a pretty strong crowd this morning,” she said.

Shawn Carter is manager of the Waffle House on MLK. He said that the surge of early shoppers to neighboring big box stores along that strip of retail choices carried over to his eatery where breakfast, either before or after the sales, was on the menu.

“Our morning business was very busy,” Carter said. “We’re doing 5 to 7 percent more than last year.”

By 12:30 p.m., Waffle House activity had dropped off to fewer than a dozen customers, although bumper-to-bumper traffic was seen through the rain outside with no indication of thinning out soon. Carter said he expected his activity to pick back up before day’s end.

In Thibodaux, Barbara Naquin said that Clyde’s Jewelers, the store her husband Gary owns, saw an increase in traffic from the same day one year earlier. She did not have calculated figures available but said that business was “really good.”

Alyssa Fanguy started her shopping in Thibodaux and progressed to Houma. She observed that the crowds at WalMart were calmer than in past years and said there was less drama among shoppers. Fanguy also said that much of her shopping bill would be handled through rewards earned on bank and credit cards. “I’ll probably spend just about as much money this year as last year,” she said.

According to the National Retail Federation, sales for the gift-giving Christmas season are expected to grow 2.3 percent from 2009 and total approximately $447 billion nationally. The anticipated level remains lower than 10-year averages on holiday sales n generally a 2.5 percent boost each season n but would be a noticeable improvement from the .04 percent increase in 2009 and a 3.9 percent decline in retail sales during 2008.

“Though the retail industry is on stronger footing than last year, companies are closely watching key economic indicators like employment and consumer confidence before getting too optimistic that the recession is behind them,” NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said in a printed statement.

A new challenge to retailers is not the competition from across the street or the other side of town, but having shoppers stay home over the weekend only to purchase goods online with the beginning of a new work week.

The NRF noted that large stores had plans made long before Thanksgiving for promotions on what has become known during the past few years as Cyber Monday. A survey conducted for Shop.org found that nearly 88 percent of retailers had plans in place for special online promotions after the weekend ended where they expect to enhance year end sales.

Some retail employees admitted concern that although online customer activity might benefit their companies overall, it might harm individual store sales. At the same time web analysts with Coremetrics reported that online buying was up 15.9 percent on Friday alone.

Cyber Monday has become known as the online equivalent to Black Friday. Each term indicates the hopes of retailers getting out of the red with their annual earnings.

Gains in holiday sales, according to the NRF, are subject to several indicators including employment, industrial production, disposable personal income and previous monthly retail sales reports.

While consumer activity might have been strong according to store workers on Friday, retail economists warn that the climate has been uneven for most of 2010. Because of that it is doubtful if the momentum from one weekend can overcome underlying concerns about general economic recovery and consumer confidence.

Meanwhile, it was 2 p.m. on Friday and a half-empty parking lot at the WalMart on Grand Caillou Road only suggested that shoppers were taking a break before hitting the stores again during the remainder of their weekend.