U.S. Black Friday shopping marked by thinner crowds, protests

By Nandita Bose and Nathan Layne
WEST HARTFORD, Conn./CHICAGO Fri Nov 28, 2014 6:14pm EST

1 of 15. A Walmart employee helps a customer with a 50' TV on sale for $218 on Black Friday in Broomfield, Colorado November 28, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking
WEST HARTFORD, Conn./CHICAGO (Reuters) - Mall crowds were relatively thin on Black Friday in a sign of what has become the new normal in U.S. holiday shopping: the mad rush is happening the night of Thanksgiving and more consumers are picking up deals online.
Across the United States, shoppers were greeted by protesters at hundreds of stores - some calling for higher wages at Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N), others protesting the decision of a grand jury not to indict a white police officer in the August shooting of an 18-year-old unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri.
Most major retailers now open Thursday evening and are extending holiday deals rather than limiting them to one day. The result is a quieter experience on a day that has traditionally kicked off the holiday shopping season, and often drawn chaotic crowds.
Black Friday has ranked as the busiest U.S. shopping day in terms of sales and traffic since 2005, according to ShopperTrak. But as demand shifts to Thursday and even earlier in the month, the research firm predicts that "Super Saturday" on Dec. 20 will be the most active day this year.
"It just looks like any other weekend," said Angela Olivera, a 32-year-old housewife shopping for children's clothing at the Westfarms Mall near Hartford, Connecticut. "The kind of crowds we usually see are missing and this is one of the biggest malls here. I think people are just not spending a lot."
The crowds normally reserved for Black Friday morning appeared on Thursday night. For instance, more than 15,000 people lined up for the opening of the flagship store of Macy's Inc (M.N) in New York on Thursday. Retailers also said they were capturing more of the holiday budget online.
Shares of Macy's, Wal-Mart and Target Corp (TGT.N) closed from 2 to 3 percent higher on Friday as investors were encouraged by the long lines on Thursday night and executives made bullish comments about demand. Lower gasoline prices also helped boost the shares, analysts said.
"It's off to a good start," said Charlie O'Shea, a retail analyst at Moody's Investors Service, about the shopping season after visiting nearly two dozen stores in northern New Jersey over the past two days.
In downtown Chicago, police arrested 11 people associated with workers' rights group OUR Walmart for blocking traffic in front of a Walmart store. The protest was one of 1,600 planned across the United States by the group, which is pushing for higher wages and benefits for the retailer's employees.
"Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart you're no good. Treat your workers like you should," a crowd of several dozen shouted outside the store.
Wal-Mart spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said: "The crowds are mostly made up of paid union demonstrators, and they do not represent the views of the 1.3 million associates" who work for the company, the largest private employer in the United States.
Buchanan also said one of the demonstrators hit a customer at the Chicago store, prompting a complaint to the police.
OUR Walmart representative Georges Tounou said the group carried out its protest peacefully.
Overall Black Friday online sales as of 1500 EST (2000 GMT) were up 8 percent from a year earlier, according to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark. Online sales were up 14.3 percent on Thanksgiving Day.
Wal-Mart said Thursday was its second-highest online sales day ever after last year's Cyber Monday, which is the Monday after Thanksgiving, when online retailers promote bargains.
Target CEO Brian Cornell said his company rang up a record day of online sales on Thursday, and was seeing brisk demand in its stores. He said the company was selling 1,800 televisions a minute between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Thursday night.
Heavy traffic caused the Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N) website to crash for a little over an hour earlier on Friday, but as of afternoon it was back up and running, a company spokesman said.
The National Retail Federation is projecting that sales for November and December will rise 4.1 percent to $616.9 billion, which would mark the most bountiful holiday season in three years. Holiday sales grew 3.1 percent in 2013.
Some shoppers said the price of gasoline - expected to go even lower after the price of crude oil fell to a multi-year low - could make them more inclined to spend.
"My budget is pretty tight this year and gas is a tremendous expense because I have to drive my daughter around a lot," Kristen Akeley, 46, who works at an elementary school, said while shopping for clothes at a Target in Connecticut.
"My gas expense has fallen from $150 a week to $80 a week and that is big savings at this time of the year."
(Additional reporting by Beth Pinsker in Ventnor, New Jersey; Editing by Jilian Mincer, Paul Simao and Matthew Lewis)

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St. Louis-area mall closes on Black Friday as Ferguson protests spread

AppId is over the quota
By Daniel Wallis and Edward McAllister
FERGUSON, Mo. Fri Nov 28, 2014 6:57pm EST

1 of 2. A protester holds a sign outside a burning Walgreens drug store after a grand jury returned no indictment in the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, November 24, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Adrees Latif
FERGUSON, Mo. (Reuters) - Demonstrators shut down a shopping mall near Ferguson, Missouri, at the start of the holiday shopping season on Friday as protests over the killing of an unarmed black teen by a white police officer turned against some retailers around the country.
After a mostly quiet Thanksgiving Day, protesters were out in force again on Friday to decry Monday's decision by a grand jury not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9 shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in the St. Louis suburb.
At locations around the country, protesters said they were encouraging a boycott of Black Friday to highlight the purchasing power of black Americans and to draw links between economic inequality and racial inequality.
"Voicing your opinion is not enough," said Sergio Uzurin, a protester in front of Macy's flagship store in New York. "You have to disrupt business as usual for this to happen and that's the only thing that's ever made change. It's the real way democracies function."
The Ferguson shooting, which has renewed a debate over race relations in the United States and the treatment of blacks and other minorities by police, has triggered months of sometimes violent protests in Ferguson and sympathy protests elsewhere.
On Friday, more than 200 people in New York sought to disrupt shopping with a protest in front of the Macy's store in Herald Square and marched into the ground floor as staff and shoppers looked on in apparent surprise.
Similar protests were also staged in other cities including Chicago, Los Angeles and Oakland, California, on Black Friday, when many retailers offer deep discounts and shoppers traditionally turn out in droves.
At the Galleria near St. Louis, demonstrators chanted "No Black Friday" before briefly lying down on the second floor, leading officials to effectively shut down the mall for the rest of the day. Security guards stopped anyone from entering the shopping center, telling disappointed bargain-hunters that it was closed for the rest of the day.
Eddie Cox, the 23-year-old assistant manager of a Lids baseball cap store, said he watched with pride as the demonstrators marched past his shop.
Cox, who is black, said his store was seeing only about a fifth as many Black Friday sales as last year due to the call by activists for a boycott.
"The business side of me kinda hates it, but at the same time, the young, activist, pro-conscious part of me loves every bit of this," Cox said. "It's a really cool time to be young, black and American."
Ferguson itself was peaceful for a second day in a row, after more than 100 arrests earlier in the week, when some demonstrators reacted to the grand jury's decision by looting or burning businesses, and officers in riot gear used tear gas to disperse crowds.
On Friday, police briefly reopened West Florissant Avenue, a main thoroughfare where many of the damaged or destroyed businesses are located. That allowed clean-up efforts to begin there and gave residents a glimpse of more burned-out stores including a clothing store and an Enterprise car rental outlet. By nightfall, the strip was closed again.
Near police headquarters, the scene of the worst violence earlier in the week, residents painted murals on the boarded-up windows of stores. Burned-out cars at one car dealership on West Florissant were loaded onto the back of flatbed trucks.
'ANY RESOURCES POSSIBLE'
In the neighboring town of Dellwood, the mayor held a news conference in which he called for state and federal aid for his city, where 13 businesses were burned on Monday and five were looted.
"I am asking that Dellwood not be forgotten," Mayor Reggie Jones said. "I am asking for any resources possible to help us rebuild."
About 16 people were arrested after chaining themselves to a train during a demonstration at a Bay Area Rapid Transit rail station in Oakland over the Missouri grand jury’s decision, a BART spokeswoman said.
In the U.S. capital, striking Wal-Mart employees dominated a Black Friday protest at Washington’s Union Station, said a spokeswoman for the organizer, OUR Walmart.
A Walmart store near Ferguson decided to cancel Black Friday sales, and merchandise was moved to other locations in the St. Louis area, employees said.
(Additional reporting by Emily Flitter in Ferguson, Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, and Barbara Goldberg in New York; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Will Dunham)

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U.S. Black Friday shopping marked by thinner crowds, protests

AppId is over the quota
By Nandita Bose and Nathan Layne
WEST HARTFORD, Conn./CHICAGO Fri Nov 28, 2014 6:14pm EST

1 of 15. A Walmart employee helps a customer with a 50' TV on sale for $218 on Black Friday in Broomfield, Colorado November 28, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking
WEST HARTFORD, Conn./CHICAGO (Reuters) - Mall crowds were relatively thin on Black Friday in a sign of what has become the new normal in U.S. holiday shopping: the mad rush is happening the night of Thanksgiving and more consumers are picking up deals online.
Across the United States, shoppers were greeted by protesters at hundreds of stores - some calling for higher wages at Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N), others protesting the decision of a grand jury not to indict a white police officer in the August shooting of an 18-year-old unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri.
Most major retailers now open Thursday evening and are extending holiday deals rather than limiting them to one day. The result is a quieter experience on a day that has traditionally kicked off the holiday shopping season, and often drawn chaotic crowds.
Black Friday has ranked as the busiest U.S. shopping day in terms of sales and traffic since 2005, according to ShopperTrak. But as demand shifts to Thursday and even earlier in the month, the research firm predicts that "Super Saturday" on Dec. 20 will be the most active day this year.
"It just looks like any other weekend," said Angela Olivera, a 32-year-old housewife shopping for children's clothing at the Westfarms Mall near Hartford, Connecticut. "The kind of crowds we usually see are missing and this is one of the biggest malls here. I think people are just not spending a lot."
The crowds normally reserved for Black Friday morning appeared on Thursday night. For instance, more than 15,000 people lined up for the opening of the flagship store of Macy's Inc (M.N) in New York on Thursday. Retailers also said they were capturing more of the holiday budget online.
Shares of Macy's, Wal-Mart and Target Corp (TGT.N) closed from 2 to 3 percent higher on Friday as investors were encouraged by the long lines on Thursday night and executives made bullish comments about demand. Lower gasoline prices also helped boost the shares, analysts said.
"It's off to a good start," said Charlie O'Shea, a retail analyst at Moody's Investors Service, about the shopping season after visiting nearly two dozen stores in northern New Jersey over the past two days.
In downtown Chicago, police arrested 11 people associated with workers' rights group OUR Walmart for blocking traffic in front of a Walmart store. The protest was one of 1,600 planned across the United States by the group, which is pushing for higher wages and benefits for the retailer's employees.
"Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart you're no good. Treat your workers like you should," a crowd of several dozen shouted outside the store.
Wal-Mart spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said: "The crowds are mostly made up of paid union demonstrators, and they do not represent the views of the 1.3 million associates" who work for the company, the largest private employer in the United States.
Buchanan also said one of the demonstrators hit a customer at the Chicago store, prompting a complaint to the police.
OUR Walmart representative Georges Tounou said the group carried out its protest peacefully.
Overall Black Friday online sales as of 1500 EST (2000 GMT) were up 8 percent from a year earlier, according to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark. Online sales were up 14.3 percent on Thanksgiving Day.
Wal-Mart said Thursday was its second-highest online sales day ever after last year's Cyber Monday, which is the Monday after Thanksgiving, when online retailers promote bargains.
Target CEO Brian Cornell said his company rang up a record day of online sales on Thursday, and was seeing brisk demand in its stores. He said the company was selling 1,800 televisions a minute between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Thursday night.
Heavy traffic caused the Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N) website to crash for a little over an hour earlier on Friday, but as of afternoon it was back up and running, a company spokesman said.
The National Retail Federation is projecting that sales for November and December will rise 4.1 percent to $616.9 billion, which would mark the most bountiful holiday season in three years. Holiday sales grew 3.1 percent in 2013.
Some shoppers said the price of gasoline - expected to go even lower after the price of crude oil fell to a multi-year low - could make them more inclined to spend.
"My budget is pretty tight this year and gas is a tremendous expense because I have to drive my daughter around a lot," Kristen Akeley, 46, who works at an elementary school, said while shopping for clothes at a Target in Connecticut.
"My gas expense has fallen from $150 a week to $80 a week and that is big savings at this time of the year."
(Additional reporting by Beth Pinsker in Ventnor, New Jersey; Editing by Jilian Mincer, Paul Simao and Matthew Lewis)

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