Old Navy, Dollar General Open Thanksgiving Day
Posted: November 25, 2009 at 5:02 a.m.
Erin Folcher, a cashier at Old Navy in Rogers, helps customer Tiffany Tayrien on Tuesday with her purchase. The store in the Scottsdale Center will be open Thanksgiving and will open at 3 a.m. Friday.
SPRINGDALE — People who get bored on Thanksgiving can get off the couch and shop because some stores will be open Thursday.
Wal-Mart has crowd control and security plans to prevent shoppers and employees getting injured in a Black Friday sale melee. An employee in New York was trampled to death on Black Friday last year. Most supercenters will be open normal hours.
Old Navy stores at Scottsdale Center in Rogers and at 3810 N. Mall Ave. in Fayetteville will be open noon to 7 p.m. Thanksgiving day.
“Last year we just had reallygreat feedback from opening stores in a few markets, so we decided to expand that to more markets this year so customers can enjoy that flexibility by starting their shopping early,” said Catherine Rhoads, Gap Inc. spokesperson.
Old Navy employees who worked Thanksgiving will be paid time and a half, Rhoads said. Stores also will provide Thanksgiving meals for those employees.
Shoppers will fi nd specials such as 50 percent off a fullpriced item if they go to www.gobblepalooza.com, print a logo and take it to an Old Navy store, according to texts Old Navy sent customers on Friday.
All 8,700 Dollar General stores nationwide will be open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thanksgiving, according to TawnMiller, senior director of corporate communication.
The stores will hold threeday sales, including electronics and household items. Dollar General also will open at 7 a.m. Friday.
Parents who have to work, or who need free time to shop, can drop off children Friday at Kirsty’s Place Child Care, with two Fayetteville locations, at 6363 W. Wedington Drive and 97 Colt Square.
Elaine Blowers, owner of Kirsty’s Place, said she has opened on Black Friday for nine years.
“Believe it or not, most of our parents need it and are still working at retail or in restaurants,” Blowers said.
The daycare full schedule is from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, but shoppers can drop off children from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. for $30, Blowers said.
Kirsty’s Place can accommodate at least 12 drop-in children at each location.
“We have a few people take advantage of it but not asmany as we’d like,” Blowers said of her Black Friday day care special.
Wal-Mart has crowd control plans this year after a greeter was crushed in a sales stampede last year. The plan, posted in a brief news release Nov. 11, is vague. “Each store has its own specific plan,” said Dan Fogleman, Wal-Mart spokesman. He declined to detail the plan.
Wal-Mart says plans “were developed in consultation with leading safety experts in the sports and entertainment industries.”
Wal-Mart’s Black Friday specials include an HP laptop for $298, $3 sleepwear for men, women and children and a Canopy 600-thread sheet set for $24, according to a separate news release on walmartstores.com.
Best Buy is not open on Thanksgiving, but Greg Galant, Fayetteville store manager, said customers will start lining up Thursday afternoon.
“Most of the people we get are the people we get every year,” Galant said.
He said police will be present for crowd control, although there haven’t been problems in the past.
Best Buy in Fayetteville and Rogers opens at 5 a.m. Employees will hand out tickets for doorbuster specials between 2 and 3 a.m. in Fayetteville. Doorbuster products are limited-quantity items advertised in newspapers.
“We let in waves of people. We don’t let everyone in at one time,” Galant said. “It gives people a way to move around the store without having to run for products.”
Stores must wait to see how Thanksgiving, Black Friday and other holiday sales impact bottom lines.
“After the Thanksgiving bulge, the business generally builds, day by day, until Christmas,” Ed Weller, managing director of ThinkEquity in San Francisco, said Nov. 19.
“If each of the first three weeks (in December) posted a modest increase, less than 1 percent, say, it might be said that the month could be tracking 2 percent or more ahead of the prior year,” Weller said.
Christmas 2008 was the worst for retail sales in the nearly 40 years the government tracked sales data, so this year is an easy comparison to last year.
Still, Weller expects retail sales this year to improve “sharply” in December.
“It’s certainly not because the economy is robust, but because the economy - and consumer spending - are improving modestly, and because the improvement compares to a collapsing pattern a year ago,” Weller said.
Retail sales may improve, but ShopperTrak’s Retail Traffic Index predicts a 4.2 percent decline in U.S. foot traffic compared with last .
News, Pages 1 on 11/25/2009
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