Archived Black Friday dud

[ANE]

Beat last year's sales is what we were told during huddle...142 Red Cards between Thursday and Friday. Management was very pleased.

 

[TLAvi]

I only worked Friday, but our sales were down by a huge margin from last year Thanksgiving to this year. I, too, am interested to see what we ended at yesterday when I arrive tonight. It was busy until 4:00 PM or so and then dead afterwards. I had cashiers helping my SL team zone. XD

 

[RedDog]

The problem is even for stores who increased sales you have a massive increase in payroll spending. Pretty much we have created a less profitable Black Friday. And that is not a good thing.

 

[Rock Lobster]

The problem is even for stores who increased sales you have a massive increase in payroll spending. Pretty much we have created a less profitable Black Friday. And that is not a good thing.

That is the real question. Our store did more than ly by a decent margin, but we were open for two more hours (that is a huge team making MORE holiday pay) and I am wondering how profitable any of the product really was being purchased.

 

[hannahlouwho]

We were dead for my entire shift (1am to 9am) I only rang up a few people the whole time.

 

[Life201]

Corporate needs to wake up & start thinking outside the changing big box retail mentality.

Rather than keep opening earlier & earlier on Thanksgiving day & hoping customers will choose YOUR store over the hundred others who clamor to get people lined up for hours...

Kick off the Christmas (Black Friday) sale the weekend BEFORE everyone else.... on FRIDAY NIGHT! That gives you your huge sales one week earlier AND it gives you a full week to restock & have a second big sale weekend.

 

[Gulfcoast]

Beat Thursday sales by around forty grand, missed Friday sales by twelve grand.

Resellers coming in without their tax exemption certificates, and demanding I take the tax off manually because they have a picture of their tax license on their phone. I offered to do the tax exemption if he bought a service plan with every ipad, but he refused and said he'd come back with his actual certificate. Blah blah blah, never have this problem with best buy, etc etc.

Line went around to receiving, but we kept everything moving smoothly, and were able to take down our interior barricades by 1030, line management and speed weaving ended at 1130.

Only did 75 redcards in total both days, which was depressing. Had one register permanently offline, because screw NCR. Oven at cafe broke down five minutes before doors opened.

Only one of the Samsung 60inchers was claimed by the three hour ticket cutoff, two left at 1030.

I spent two hours straight yelling at guests to speed weave them, since lolnowalkies for front end.

 

[TeamRed]

It was busy for awhile ( Thursday) and then dead and I went for in on Friday to pick up something and it was dead. Compared to what it was last year ya this year's sales will be waaaaaay down. Alot of people I heard do their shopping online as opposed to doing the whole black friday deals which makes alot of sense.

 

[FZRider]

We did not make sales Thursday or Friday

 

[redeye58]

I ping-ponged between FA & SB most of the night.
Once it slowed down, we restocked for the second wave.
At first they said sales were down but today they said we made sales (?!).
Whatevs.

 

[asidius]

We exceeded our Thanksgiving sales but our black Friday sales were down. Overall we missed our goal by $400.

 

[meronachic]

I wasn't on the floor this year when we opened but it did seem slower than last year - not a lot of cars in the parking lot when I pulled in at 5:30 either. It seemed busier from 12am-3am than last year though. But we made sales both days so it must not have been that bad.

 

[Kartman]

We missed sales...

 

[POGguy]

We killed sales by about 200k. Did little over 1.3 million between Thursday/Friday. Worked crowd control at the beginning then was assigned to keep watch on some of the high value items.

Highlight of the night had to be the guy that tried to make a run for the door with a pair of beats and got clotheslined by a cop.

 

[salesfloor10]

Beat Thursday sales by around forty grand, missed Friday sales by twelve grand.

Resellers coming in without their tax exemption certificates, and demanding I take the tax off manually because they have a picture of their tax license on their phone. I offered to do the tax exemption if he bought a service plan with every ipad, but he refused and said he'd come back with his actual certificate. Blah blah blah, never have this problem with best buy, etc etc.

Line went around to receiving, but we kept everything moving smoothly, and were able to take down our interior barricades by 1030, line management and speed weaving ended at 1130.

Only did 75 redcards in total both days, which was depressing. Had one register permanently offline, because screw NCR. Oven at cafe broke down five minutes before doors opened.

Only one of the Samsung 60inchers was claimed by the three hour ticket cutoff, two left at 1030.

I spent two hours straight yelling at guests to speed weave them, since lolnowalkies for front end.

I wish I could sympathize about 75 reds, we got 8. 8 cards on Thursday night. So depressing. It ended up being like 20 or something between Thurs to Fri.

Made sales Thurs, missed by 20k Friday, not sure about Saturday.

 

[commiecorvus]

Looks like nationally it was down from $57.4 billion last year to about 50.p billion this year.
What's interesting is the consumer index is higher this year, which means people are buying more online etc.
And once again the article uses Target to illustrate its point.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/01/black-friday-weekend-sales-fall_n_6245926.html

Black Friday fatigue is setting in.

Early discounting, more online shopping and a mixed economy meant fewer people shopped over Thanksgiving weekend, the National Retail Federation said Sunday.

Overall, 133.7 million people shopped in stores and online over the four-day weekend, down 5.2 percent from last year, according to a survey of 4,631 people conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics for the trade group.

Total spending for the weekend is expected to fall 11 percent to $50.9 billion from an estimated $57.4 billion last year, the trade group estimated.

Part of the reason is that Target, J.C. Penney, Macy's, Wal-Mart and other major retailers pushed fat discounts as early as Halloween. Some opened stores even earlier on Thanksgiving. All that stole some thunder from Black Friday and the rest of the weekend.

Still, the preliminary data makes retailers worried that shoppers remain frugal despite improving employment and falling gas prices.

Matt Shay, the trade group's CEO, said he thinks people benefiting from the recovery may not feel the need to fight crowds to get the deepest discount on a TV or toaster. And those who feel like the recession never ended may not have the money and will stretch out what they spend through Christmas.

And shoppers are still feeling the effects of high food prices and stagnant wages.

"While they're more optimistic, they're very cautious," Shay said. "If the deals are not right for them, they're not going to spend."

Bottom line: Expect more deep discounts, all season long.

"Every day will be Black Friday. Every minute will be Cyber Monday," he said.

That could be what it takes to get shoppers to open their wallets for the holiday shopping season, which accounts for about 20 percent of annual retail sales.

Besides economic factors, people are becoming more discerning when they shop. Armed with smartphones and price-comparison apps, they know what's a good deal — and what's not.

Kimani Brown, 39, of New York City, was among the Black Friday defectors. After four years of braving the crowds, the sales failed to lure him out this year.

"I consider myself a smart shopper. And it's not as alluring as it used to be," Brown said. "It's a marketing tool, and I don't want to be pulled into it."

He also said the frenzy pushed him to overspend, and he paid the price in January on his credit card statement.

Instead, he said he will look online Monday, the online shopping day often called Cyber Monday.

Some who went shopping on Thanksgiving felt they were doing it against their will. Cathyliz Lopez of New York City said she felt forced to shop on the holiday.

"It's ruining the spirit of Thanksgiving," the 20-year-old said Thursday. "But I was checking all the ads, and the best deals were today."

The National Retail Federation is still predicting a 4.1 percent increase in sales for the season. That would be the highest increase since the 4.8 percent gain in 2011.

 

[CAMcgee]

We beat sales by like 20k but only did like 45 redcards between Thursday and Friday

 

[looseseal]

We made sales by 11k Thursday, but missed by about 40k or 50k on Friday. I hope this will be the incentive to stop opening earlier and earlier, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.

 

[redandkhaki]

so i went into work today and we were over sales by 100K on friday so we ended up making sales for the weekend. I was shocked because of how slow we were on thursday night.

 

[Kartman]

This was an online year.

 

[Rarejem]

Totally missed sales goals this year. Maybe next year Thanksgiving will truly be a national holiday. (hahahahaha just kidding!)

 

[Nauzhror]

At huddle this am we were told we were number 1 for sales Thursday $315,000. We missed friday sales, by about $20,000 on a projection of $345,000.

Weird. We did 317k Thursday, so about the same as your store there, but Friday we did 474k. Just seems odd that there wasn't the same level of disparity Thursday as Friday, guess most stores stayed busy for a short 6 hour day, but didn't necessarily do so for the 23 hours that followed.

I wish I could sympathize about 75 reds, we got 8. 8 cards on Thursday night. So depressing. It ended up being like 20 or something between Thurs to Fri.

Oh lord. My STL's head would have exploded. She wanted hourly reports on # of redcards and such. She seemed disappointed that we "only" got 46 Thursday.

 

[hollyhobby]

Ours was only busy 1 hour on Thursday. Then dead. But Friday was a fairly steady stream.

 

[sigma7]

We met passed our red are goal on Thursday which was well over 100. It didn't feel as busy as normal, but we made our sales goal for both days and then some...around 600k for thurs/fri. That's more than we made last year, but it just didn't feel as crazy. We had pretty steady business the whole time.

 

[CleanMyBackRoOm]

We were busy for the first couple hours but after that it was just steady. We barely made sales Thursday night, maybe beat it by less that 5k, I know we crushed it Friday and Saturday though. This weeks going to be a hardcore recovery week and I am not excited about super zoning and the return of 4x4s lol. Anyways, I conclude with many of you that this year was a huge year for online shopping. It seems most people are coming out in the droves for the bigger electronic items such as TV's and Gaming consoles but that's pretty much the vast majority of what people are buying.

I think Target as a company needs to get more creative to bring in different crowds. The sale we have on toys' is meh' at best, we have better deals on action figures at many different times of the year than we did on Thursday/Black Friday. I think that's another thing, people are just getting smarter about when / how / where they spend their money during different times of the year.

My only real complaint was to that 1 dick head guest who thought he could swindle me into changing the price of a sound bar just because he didn't understand why one was more expensive than the other since we were out of the samsung one. He seriously wanted me to take off $100 from one because they were "pretty much the same". Had to explain to him multiple times we weren't price matching or ad subbing until Sunday or Monday and he started getting lippy. Which is when I decided to just drop the nuke on his ass and tell him this isn't even the best time to buy these things and he should just wait until Super Bowl week.