A major shopping mall operator is offering some early holiday perks to retail workers as they handle the onslaught of shoppers on Black Friday.
 
For the first time, Taubman is giving out free breakfast and mini massages to the workers at its shopping centers around the United States on Nov. 27 — a.k.a. the day after Thanksgiving, a.k.a. the kickoff of the winter holiday shopping season.
 
The idea is that if those workers are happier – and well fed — the day can be a bit less stressful for everyone.  Hand, neck and shoulder massages may also ease the stress of dealing with thousands of shoppers flocking to stores in search of gifts.
 
Water bottles being handed out to retail staff (shown here) are adorned with the slogan “retail therapy refresh”
 
“relax. take a deep breath. smile,” the bottle reads. 
 
Retailers, especially those at upscale malls like Taubman’s The Mall at Short Hills, could certainly use a boost.  Sales are expected to be up minimally, at best, this holiday season, even after last year’s poor showing as the recession took hold.

Some of Taubman’s malls will also dole out free breakfast for early morning shoppers, spokeswoman Karen Mac Donald said.  Other goodies, such as free early morning parking at centers where shoppers usually have to pay (like the Beverly Center in Los Angeles), are also planned.

The tokens of appreciation for retail workers are part of Taubman’s “The Year of the Merchant” program, which kicked off at the beginning of 2009, Mac Donald said.
 
(Photo: Reuters)

Check Out this prediction about Black Friday deals.

Black Friday, the day after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday that typically kicks off the holiday shopping season, is known for some of the best discounts of the year, both in stores and on the Web.

And its never too early to think about deals, as illustrated by dealsnews.com, which has compiled a list of what it predicts will be the best holiday deals to emerge between mid-November and “Cyber Monday” — the Monday after Thanksgiving when office workers go online en masse to shop for specials.

This year’s list kicks of with expected deals on netbooks, which are inexpensive and compact laptops suited for basic computing and surfing the Internet.

Dealsnews predicted that a Linux-based netbook with 9-inch screen will be as cheap as $129, while pricier models would be ”well-equipped” $399 netbooks with 15.4-inch screens.

If you are in the market for a flat-screen TV, the Web site predicted that you are likely to find an abundance of deals. TVs traditionally are one of the top-selling items around the holidays since retailers offer deep discounts on them. This year, a 40-inch or 42-inch LCD high-definition TV could be as cheap as $449 while the bigger brand-name one with 52-inch screen could be on the market for $1,049, the Web site showed.

The site also said shoppers should be able to snag good deals on Blu-ray players, and items like digital photo frames.

Also in the basket:

Target moves to declassify board

P&G sees sales rising in second quarter

Dollar General profit more than triples

(Photo/Reuters)

The beaten-down appliance sector got a shot in the arm on Black Friday as many consumers bought new washers for their laundry rooms, one spot survey shows.

Appliance sales, especially of washing machines and dryers, were up significantly over Thanksgiving weekend as shoppers responded to discounts, said David MacGregor, an analyst with Longbow Research.

More consumers are also buying extended warranties for these big-ticket items, he added.

MacGregor, who conducts regular surveys of appliance sellers, said 87 percent of retailer contacts indicated sales met or exceeded expectations, in some cases doubling forecasts for the weekend.

Sears, the biggest U.S. appliance retailer, benefited strongly as promotions and doorbuster offers drove Black Friday traffic. The retailer’s Black Friday deals included a Kenmore washer-dryer pair priced at $599 that normally sells for $1,199, a spokesman told Reuters.

“Based on our estimates of costs, we believe that Sears probably sold most of these heavily discounted items at or below cost and then tried to recover some margin through sales of extended warranties,” MacGregor said in a research note.

The continuing U.S. housing slump and tighter credit has hurt appliance demand. U.S. shipments of major appliances were down about 9 percent for the year to date through late October, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers.

The analyst said he expects the Black Friday strength to aid Whirlpool, whose brands hold leading market share positions in most categories. Whirlpool’s shares, which have fallen 50 percent this year, were up 8 percent on Thursday.

Photo: Whirlpool

Retailers say it can be difficult to measure their monthly sales results accurately on a year-over-year basis because of calendar shifts — sometimes a holiday falls in one month, boosting results, while the next year the holiday shifts into a different month, hurting results.

The most drastic case of this is usually seen in March and April, when the timing of the Easter holiday can help March sales and hurt April, or vice versa.

As monthly sales results came in today, numerous retailers, including Target, Saks, and Pacific Sunwear, said the timing of Thanksgiving (Nov 27 this year vs. Nov 22 last year) hurt their November results. The later Thanksgiving meant fewer busy post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping days in this year’s November period, they said, making sales figures look especially weak.

For instance, Target’s same-store sales fell more than 10 percent. It had warned that the calendar shift eliminated 7 holiday shopping days from November and pushed them into December, which would drag down November’s results. Saks and Pacific Sunwear also reported lower November same-store sales.

But the Thanksgiving shift was apparently not a big deal for industry leader Wal-Mart. While most retailers reported a drop in November same-store sales, Wal-Mart posted a stronger-than-expected 3.4 percent rise.

And in contrast to many others, Wal-Mart’s November monthly reporting period ended on Nov. 28 — Black Friday. That meant the discount behemoth had just one post-Thanksgiving day in November compared with most retailers whose November reporting periods ended on Nov 29 — giving them two supposedly busy post-Thanksgiving shopping days in the month.

Looks like low prices on food and toiletries are one way to trump a shifting calendar.

(Photo: Reuters/Nicole Maestri taken in a Wal-Mart store in Secaucus, NJ the week of Thanksgiving)

Check out shoppers with fresh credit loosening their purse strings a bit - at least for now.

“There’s no question there’s some pent-up demand,” as over the past three months consumers saved and paid off their credit cards bills instead of spending, said Stifel Nicolaus retail analyst Richard Jaffe. 

Now, “the credit cards are reloaded and the consumer has the ability to spend” on both holiday gifts and personal items such as clothes they had been holding off from buying, amid rising food and gas prices, falling housing values and shrinking credit availability.

Still, many leading U.S. retailers reported steep drops in November sales at stores open more than a year, as bargain seekers at the beginning of the holiday shopping season were unable to save a very tough month.

When those holiday promotions taper off, consumers with lingering credit card debt from holiday gift-giving and less discounted items will likely put the brakes on spending yet again, says Jaffe.

Also in the basket:

Safeway to cut costs, prices in 2009; shares rise (Reuters)

Rite Aid posts flat November same-store sales (Reuters)

Mattel wins court ban of MGA’s Bratz dolls (Reuters)

(Photo/Reuters)

The chaotic crowds that show up in search of rock bottom prices on Black Friday took a deadly turn this year, when a worker at Wal-Mart, Jdimytai Damour, was trampled and killed by a crowd of frenzied shoppers at one of the discount retailer’s stores in Long Island.

The shocking death made headlines around the world, showing the dark side of American consumerism. A reader identified as Life Faith wrote in to talk Shop Talk to describe the harrowing experience of being caught in the crowd at that Wal-Mart store on Friday morning:

The crowd had a strong wave-like effect and grabbed us in. i almost broke my arm trying to hold my family together. People just kept pushing and grabbing, everyone was for themselves basically, some even punching just to get through…

i do regret going that day, and it just shows me how animalistic humans can be.

In a blog posting on On Faith, Susan Thistlethwaite, a professor of theology at Chicago Theological Seminary, said Black Friday has now taken on a new meaning.

The term ‘Black Friday” traditionally refers to the day after Thanksgiving when shoppers start their holiday shopping and retailers start to see their balance sheets go from red ink to black ink, from deficit to profit. This year, ‘Black Friday’ has come to mean something else to me. Black Friday, I realized today, means death by consumerism.

… I have come to believe that we should honor the life of this Wal-Mart worker by thinking far more deeply about our genuinely corrupt relationship with consumerism.

In a letter to the editor on the New York Times website, Michael Pravica from Henderson, Nevada said Corporate America must shoulder some blame for creating the hype surrounding Black Friday “that causes some aggressive and nasty people to do horrible things.”

Having only a few deeply discounted items in stock when more than a thousand people come to purchase this item only abets the desperate hysteria and poisoned, competitive dog-eat-dog atmosphere. All Americans need to reflect on this tragedy as we approach the season of what should be good will toward all humankind and ensure that it never happens again.

David Carr, who writes a column for the Monday Business section of the New York Times, said in a story on Nov 30 that media and retailers built Black Friday.

In partnership with retail advertising clients, the news media have worked steadily and systematically to turn Black Friday into a broad cultural event. A decade ago, it was barely in the top 10 shopping days of the year. But once retailers hit on the formula of offering one or two very-low-priced items as loss leaders, media groups began to cover the post-Thanksgiving outing as a kind of consumer sporting event.

On chicagotribune.com, business columnist Kayce Ataiyero writes that the death should give shoppers pause.

You can’t legislate humanity, and that’s what was lost Friday along with Damour’s life. The shoppers, not the retailers, were the ones who checked their decency at the door. They were the ones who stepped over and around Damour’s body to get to the deals, jostling emergency workers, news reports said. They balked when workers announced that the store was closing due to his death.
 
That these customers were capable of such callousness in what is supposed to be the most generous of all seasons is an indictment of the consumer culture we support. The shame of this sad episode is a shared one.

 What is your reaction to the death? Will it change how you shop on Black Friday?

(Photo: Reuters)

Black Friday has come and gone but what on earth happened at the cash registers over the Thanksgiving weekend? The data is trickling in, and so are the early critiques. (See our previous blogs: Treat Black Friday reports cautiously and Black Friday data spurs more questions than answers)

Here is a break down of the latest reports and what data is still to come:

National Retail Federation:

According its 2008 Black Friday Weekend survey, conducted by BIGresearch and published on Sunday, the NRF said more than 172 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend (which includes Thursday, Friday, Saturday and projections for Sunday), up from 147 million shoppers last year. 

Shoppers spent an average of $372.57 this weekend, up 7.2 percent over last year’s $347.55. Total spending reached an estimated $41.0 billion, up from $34.6 billion a year ago.

The results came from a survey that polled 3,370 consumers from Nov. 27-29. The consumer poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.7 percent.

ShopperTrak: 

ShopperTrak RCT’s National Retail Sales Estimate found sales on Black Friday and Saturday rose 1.9 percent from 2007 – with each day posting total sales of $10.6 billion and $6.0 billion, respectively.

It said Saturday sales fell 0.8 percent compared with last year as most Black Friday promotions ended.  Sales on Saturday last year rose 5.4 percent over 2006, with $6.1 billion spent that day.   

“At this point, we anticipate sales levels will continue to slow this week as consumers will remain home, looking for additional holiday sales toward the end of the shortened 2008 season,” said Bill Martin, co-founder of ShopperTrak, in a statement on Monday.

ShopperTrak’s results are derived from statistics from the Commerce Department on sales of items like apparel, furniture, and electronics, combined with data it tracks on shopper traffic in stores.

SpendingPulse:

On Monday, SpendingPulse, a data service provided by MasterCard Advisors, said sales at U.S. specialty apparel retailers rose 1.6 percent on Friday and Saturday from a year earlier, but sales at electronics specialty retailers fell 14.3 percent. Luxury retailers saw a 2.4 percent increase,  while e-commerce sales rose 11.8 percent, it said. 

“We definitely think there was some pent-up demand that came to the front lines on Black Friday,” said SpendingPulse’s Michael McNamara. “Major discounting obviously attracted that.” 

SpendingPulse is a macroeconomic indicator that estimates U.S. retail sales across all payment forms, including cash and checks.

Data to come:

Dec. 3: SpendingPulse will release its full report on November monthly sales.

Dec. 3: ShopperTrak will release its complete report for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, in addition to sales and traffic data for the week ending Nov. 29.

Dec. 4: Major retail chains, like Wal-Mart, Gap and Kohl’s, will release their November monthly sales figures and are expected to comment on the Black Friday weekend.

(Photo\Reuters)

Check out some cautionary comments about how much weight to put on Black Friday sales reports.
 
The comments come from the Goldman Sachs U.S. economic research group and repeat caution the firm has given in the past about the much-hyped kickoff to the holiday shopping season.
 
1. “Shoppers are not sales.” Essentially, Goldman Sachs notes that just because people are in stores, it doesn’t mean they are buying something.
 
“Over the years, Black Friday has become a cultural event; people go not just to shop but to be a part of the broader experience, which could cause an increase in traffic that bears little relation to consumer spending,” the Goldman team wrote. 

2. “Sales are not profits.” Retailers were offering deep discounts to get consumers into stores on Black Friday, discounts that could hurt profits.
 
3. “One day is not the holiday season.” The team notes that the correlation between data on Black Friday and the entire holiday season has been historically poor.
 
Thanksgiving also came late this year, so there are fewer shopping days between then and Christmas.
 
“Simply put, with less shopping days each one has to be better for the overall holiday shopping season to be strong,” the Goldman Sachs team wrote.
 
Want to keep track of the holiday season as it unfolds for retailers? Check out the Reuters Holiday Shopping page here.
 
Also in the basket:
 
Bargain hunters fail to save retail sales
 
Sears Holdings posts loss, plans store closures
 
Staples posts higher than expected profit
 
Wal-Mart assailed on death (WSJ)

(Reuters photo)

If you want to know who was the real retail winner amid all the Black Friday frenzy, just look in the mirror.

That’s the word from Jim Barry, a former editor of Video magazine, who is now a spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association.

Barry said consumers found “really unbelievable” prices the day after Thanksgiving on some electronics items, such as 42-inch flat-panel TVs selling for $600 to $800.

But “for retailers and manufacturers, the question is was there any profit in any of this stuff?” he added.

Here’s more from a chat with him:

Q: Will electronics prices return to normal after Black Friday?

A: “You’re still going to find deals, especially on flat-panel TVs for which there seems to be an oversupply right now. There’s also this situation of a couple of companies (closing stores) … Some of that product may be at liquidators. Flat-panel TVs have been coming down in price, not withstanding Black Friday and will continue to come down. I would expect prices to continue to be terrific for consumers.”

Q: Will the February 2009 shift to digital signals spur holiday flat-panel TV sales?

A: “The transition has more people thinking about their TV … So in that sense, it can’t help but help (flat-panel sales). But I wouldn’t call it a major factor.”

Q: Where are people buying electronics?

A: “Everywhere. The specialty stores like Best Buy, there are other specialty stores like J&R in New York, regional stores. Then there’s Wal-Mart. Then people are buying online. Personally I don’t think Cyber Monday is as big a deal as it was a few years back partly because more people have high-speed Internet at home now.”

Q: Will rival store closures benefit Best Buy?

A: “It’s not necessarily great for Best Buy because you’ve got liquidators selling product. The only clear winner now is the consumer, who’s getting great deals.”

(Photo\Reuters)

On Chicago’s State Street, I found these dinosaurs creeping up on a Christmas tree at the FAO Schwarz section inside Macy’s:

Moving on to an empty TV section in Sears:

At Sears, Christmas decorations were already 60 percent off:

And at Charlotte Russe, more discounts: