Bargain hunters, their bellies stuffed with a holiday feast, dashed to Bay Area malls on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, but with retailers stretching out deals and the convenience of online shopping, the crowds at some stores thinned out early.
At the San Francisco Premium Outlets in Livermore, which opened at 6 p.m. Thursday, some shoppers walked through the stores like it was a normal day. But at shops with designer brands such as Ugg, Kate Spade and Burberry, the lines grew long and folks had to wait until the stores cleared out to enter.
“I waited two hours,” said Jikai Li, who sat down at a bench after standing in a line outside Tory Burch. “You know it’s good stuff. But maybe next time they can be more prepared and give us water as we wait.”
Randall Kleveland was shopping with his wife, Emie, and two kids, and noticed the outlet was noticeably less crowded overall compared with last year.
“My guess is a lot of people came in at midnight and now they’re home,” he said. “Also, we were at my cousin’s house last night and they were all shopping online. I have a feeling they’re not coming out today. And there’s more and more people buying stuff online.”
Similarly, the crowds at Westfield Valley Fair in the early morning hours seemed akin to a typical Saturday or Sundayy, although a steady stream of shoppers with bags stuffed full of items wandered the mall walkways.
However, as the day wore on at the huge San Jose retail complex, more crowds poured into the mall. By noon, Stevens Creek and Winchester boulevards were packed and even became tangled in gridlock from time to time. The valet parking area at the mall was full by late morning on Friday.
“It’s really crowded, but everyone is being very polite and helpful,” said Megan Davenport, a Pleasanton resident who was shopping at Valley Fair with her daughter and son. “The lines at some of our favorite stores are really crowded.” She and her family made the trek to San Jose because they believe Valley Fair is a superior mall to their hometown regional retail center, Stoneridge.
Black Friday shoppers walk inside Westfield Valley Fair in San Jose on Nov. 27, 2015. (Josie Lepe/Bay Area News Group)
The 7 a.m. opening of the Stanford Shopping Center, with its shrine-like Apple store and even a Tesla showcase, was also a low-key affair, with plenty of parking and sparse retail activity.
Wells Fargo expects holiday sales nationally to rise 3.4 percent during the Christmas 2015 shopping season, which is slightly slower than the actual increase of 4.1 percent that occurred in the 2014 holiday shopping period.
A mixed bag of early deals
While some shoppers got the flat-screen television or designer bag at the bargain price they wanted, others were disappointed by the Thanksgiving and Black Friday deals.
At a Walmart in Milpitas, shoppers packed into parking lots and crowded the store seeking an array of deals Thanksgiving evening. Sharply discounted television sets were the major attractions for the throngs that snaked through the aisles of the store.
Prashant Nair was one of the many who bought a flat-screen television on sale at Walmart. This year marked the first time that Nair, a Milpitas resident, ventured out on Thanksgiving for holiday shopping. Nair bought a 32-inch flat screen TV for $ 125. “That was a good deal,” Nair said. “I plan to do this again next year.”
But San Jose resident Eckhart Jordan, who has come out to shop on Thanksgiving night for five years in a row, said the deals weren’t as good as they have been in previous years.
“The sales they were offering tonight were already available last week,” Jordan said.
Dave Ackerman, marketing director of the San Francisco Premium Outlets said a steady stream of shoppers came through until about 3:30 a.m. As dawn broke Friday, top draws such as Gucci and Coach had queues of 10 to 20 people waiting to rotate through.
He anticipated the number of shoppers to grow as the day went on, peaking in the early afternoon. By midmorning, much of the parking lot was full and cars were circling for spots near an entrance and the lines at popular outlets were growing. Getting to the mall was becoming more difficult — cars were backed up from the surface streets to the El Charro Road offramp, and eastbound Interstate 580 traffic was backed up for miles into Pleasanton.
“I looked online and the outlets still have better prices,” said Rolanda Rogers of Oakland, who scored a Coach messenger bag. “I thought if I got here early I would avoid the lines. But I do like the energy.”
Rogers said she preps for Black Friday by comparison shopping online between brick-and-mortar deals and online vendors such as Amazon. She had already lasered in on the bag she wanted before arriving at the store around 6 a.m.
“We’re seeing a lot of savvy shoppers who have done their homework,” Ackerman said. “They’ve already made price-point comparisons and kind of have an idea what they’re looking for.”
An annual tradition with families and friends
In many cases, the morning after packing up Thanksgiving leftovers and getting out of the house early was mostly about nostalgia, not just savings. At the Stanford Shopping Center, mother-daughter team Denise Howell, a 60-year-old retired hygienist from Fremont, and her 27-year-old daughter Lauren, who works for a startup, the early morning trek to Bloomingdale’s was part of an annual bonding time.
For at least 15 years the pair have hit the Black Friday sales, and this year was no different. “I feel like we’ve always done it,” Lauren said with a nod to her mom.
Stacey Bibo of San Jose hauled a cart through the Valley Fair walkways that she had filled with towels, clothes, shoes and other items bought at Macy’s and other stores in the San Jose mall on Black Friday.
Bibo had shopped on Thanksgiving night for the second year in a row from 8 p.m. until 11 p.m. and then was back at Valley Fair when the mall opened at 7 a.m. Friday. She also chatted with her friend Jennifer Catuna of San Jose, whom she met for their annual Black Friday excursion.
“We’ve been coming out here on Black Friday for a long time, before it became popular with the teenagers to come out in the morning,” said Catuna, who brought her daughter along on the shopping trip. “I went to Macy’s. They always have good deals there, but you have to shop at Macy’s regularly to find them.”
Sarah Hicks of San Jose, said Black Friday excursions are about more than just shopping, and sometimes not even that.
“It’s more like socializing,” Hicks said. “We found a few Christmas gifts for friends: clothes, funny gifts, joke gifts.”
A brighter picture for Bay Area sales
The retail shopping picture for late November and throughout December is brighter in the Bay Area than nationally, analysts said.
Shoppers in the Bay Area are planning to spend an average of $ 551 this year on gifts during the holiday shopping season. That’s up about 6 percent from the roughly $ 519 they spent on average in the 2014 holiday shopping season, according to an annual survey by Deloitte, a professional services firm.
What’s more, Bay Area consumers are expected to spend 13 percent more than the $ 487 that shoppers are expected to spend, on average, nationally, Deloitte determined.
An estimated 41 percent of shoppers in the Bay Area say their current household financial situation is better in 2015 compared with 2014. Nationally, 33 percent of the respondents to the Deloitte survey said that their financial situation was better this year than last.
Bay Area shoppers appear more likely to procrastinate about holiday shopping this year compared to their national counterparts. About 73 percent of Bay Area shoppers expect to finish their Christmas shopping in December, compared with 69 percent nationally.
Online shopping is expected to be more prevalent in the Bay Area than nationally. Bay Area consumers plan to do 50 percent of their holiday shopping online, while nationally, consumers intend to conduct 44 percent of their holiday purchases through the Internet.
“Consumers are upbeat in the Bay Area,” said Mike Johnson, a Deloitte partner and leader of the firm’s retail industry practice in the Bay Area. “The economy is strong and that improves how consumers view their own personal situation.”
Staff writers Eric Kurhi, Joyce Tsai, and Karen de Sa contributed to this story.
Contact Queenie Wong at 408-920-2706. Follow her at Twitter.com/QwongSJ.
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