Holiday Shopping Season Continues With Black Friday
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Black Friday was already well underway before many awoke this morning.
Holiday Shopping Season Continues With Black Friday
The traditional kickoff to the holiday shopping season has become a two-day affair, with more stores opening before people put down their turkey legs on Thanksgiving. There's good reason for the creep; businesses know shoppers will only spend so much, and they want the first crack at those holiday budgets.
Newport Centre Mall in Jersey City officially opened its doors at 6 a.m. Friday, but at least 10 of the mall's 130 stores decided to stay open all night, CBS2's Scott Rapoport reported. The stores apparently felt the flow of customer traffic was strong enough to warrant the extra hours.
Holiday Shopping Season Continues With Black Friday
Some shoppers at the Queens Center Mall in Elmhurst told CBS2's Ilana Gold that they had been shopping since 1 a.m. Friday.
"The specials, the deals you have to get up early, get there before everybody else," said shopper Michael Rosales. "I went to Macy's. I got a nice sweater -- it was buy one, get one free."
"I got here about 4 a.m. and I went to Game Stop first and the line was madness," said shopper Allan Davis.
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The crowds at both malls were thinner than usual early Friday morning, but the Queens Center Mall was packed again around 11 a.m.
It's a make-or-break time for many retailers, which on average get 20 percent of their annual sales during the holiday shopping season.
As CBS2's Dave Carlin reported, retailers are counting on Americans being more eager to buy this year.
Low gas prices are helping give U.S. consumers an estimated 40 billion dollars in extra spending money.
The National Retail Federation forecasts holiday sales will grow 4.1 percent to $616.9 billion -- the biggest jump since 2011.
Last year, sales on Black Friday slumped 13.2 percent to $9.74 billion, according to ShopperTrak, which tracks data at more than 70,000 stores globally. Bill Martin, co-founder of ShopperTrak, says it's still uncertain how stores will fare Friday.
Shoppers certainly were out in full force on Thanksgiving.
There were 500 people in line by the time a Target store in East Harlem opened at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving. And 2,000 rushed in at the Toys R Us in Times Square when it opened at 5 p.m. For Macy's 6 p.m. opening, there were more than 15,000 shoppers outside its Herald Square flagship store, a little more than last year.
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