Retailers offer deals to steal Prime Day thunder – USA TODAY

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Black Friday is coming five months early for some retailers.

Stores including Target, Sears and Banana Republic are offering deals around the same time as Amazon's big Prime Day sale, which occurs on July 12 this year.

Amazon Prime Day offers the online shopping service's Prime users a 24-hour sale on many products, with new deals starting as often as every five minutes throughout the day.

Last year, Amazon offered 100,000 deals exclusively for Prime members. The customers responded by ordered 34.4 million items worldwide, exceeding the service's post-Thanksgiving Black Friday records. Amazon is promising this year will be even bigger.

Competing retailers are betting that customers in the mood to shop — and maybe do some online price comparison — will head to more than just the Amazon app.

The Limited, Sears, Bealls, Banana Republic, Express, the Gap and Old Navy are all offering big discounts in the week before Prime day, says Offers.com.

Banana Republic is offering an extra 50% off sale through July 11. The Limited is offering 50% off brand new arrivals. The Gap is holding “The Great Gap Sale,” with big discounts on Sunday.

Target is offering discounts on home items. But the company said it has more to do with the back-to-school season. Shoppers “will find deals on supplies, backpacks and apparel throughout July and August,” it said in a statement.

While Prime Day has been a huge hit for Amazon and for retailers as a whole, the name is a problem for them.

Trying to shy away from the P-word as just more free advertising for Amazon, other retailers have taken to calling Prime Day "Black Friday July," said Howard Schaffer, general manager of Offers.com.

"Obviously 'Black Friday' means discount to people," so it's a good workaround, he said.

Best Buy held a “Black Friday in July” sale around Amazon Prime Day last year, joining Forever 21, Groupon and Petco. Walmart offered free shipping to minimum orders of $ 35 along with other deals, and directly criticized Amazon for only offering sales to customers who pay extra.

"We've heard some retailers are charging $ 100 to get access to a sale. But the idea of asking customers to pay extra in order to save money just doesn't add up for us," Walmart said in a blog post last year.

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