Holiday Shoppers Hit Stores Even Earlier
Posted: November 26, 2011 at 5:51 a.m.
Andrea Chamorro, left, and friend Gail Quinonez, both of Clarksville, laugh Friday while sitting beside a huge pile of bags inside the Northwest Arkansas Mall in Fayetteville.
Black Friday officially ate its way into Thanksgiving this year, but that didn’t keep shoppers home. Some retailers, such as Kmart and Walmart, have traditionally been open Thanksgiving, but this year Walmart kicked off its first doorbuster sales at 10 p.m.
LONG LINES Shoppers wait in a line Thursday that winds through a parking lot and up Mall Avenue near Best Buy on East Joyce B...
By The Numbers
Holiday Sales
• 2010 holiday sales were $453 billion
• 2011 projected holiday sales are $465.6 billion
• Holiday sales represented 19 percent of total retail sales in 2010
• Clothing and accessory stores accounted for $48.6 billion, or 23 percent of total sector sales, in 2010
• Department stores accounted for $46 billion, or 24 percent of total sector sales, in 2010
• Discount stores accounted for $28.8 billion, or 23 percent of total sector sales, in 2010
• Retailers hired between 480,000 and 500,000 season employees this year
Source: National Retail Federation
At A Glance
What is Black Friday?
Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S.. Retailers generally see a spike in sales and consider this to be the start of the holiday shopping season. It’s common for retailers to offer special promotions and to open early to draw in customers. The idea behind the term “Black Friday” is it’s the day retail stores have enough sales to put them “in the black” for the year — an accounting expression that alludes to the practice of recording losses in red and profit in black.
Source: investopedia.com
LET’S MAKE A DEAL Chris Stephenson, 16, of Fayettevile reads an advertising insert Thursday while waiting in line outside Bes...
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