Lucy Finegan of Morgan Hill manages a smile despite the early hour and the long line as she waits to check out at Target on Black Friday, the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season.
Bleary-eyed, pajama-wearing shoppers left Morgan Hill's two largest retail stores with big-screen televisions, outerwear, digital cameras, toys and weary smiles after scoring the biggest bargains of the year on some of the holiday season's most sought-after gifts.
Olga Perez had a shopping cart full of radio-controlled Hummers and other toys at Target in Cochrane Plaza Friday. Perez came to Morgan Hill from Los Angeles just to try to start - and finish - her Christmas shopping in one day.
"You don't want to try to go shopping today in Los Angeles," Perez said about 5:30 a.m., comparing the relatively light crowds locally to those expected in the sprawled-out southern metropolis.
Target opened four hours earlier than usual at 5 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving. Annually known as Black Friday, the day marks the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season and when high customer traffic pushes many stores' ledgers into positive territory each year.
David Patrick, a Morgan Hill native, bought a brand new 32-inch LCD screen TV for $240 - about a 50 percent discount.
"It's for my dorm room," said Patrick, who was on vacation from school at Virginia Tech University.
Target manager Tiffany Morneau expects about 10,000 customers to shop at the Morgan Hill store this weekend, as the bargains there last through Saturday. About 250 people were lined up outside the front doors before the store opened Friday, Morneau said.
That's significantly busier than last year's Black Friday, which started off one of the most sluggish holiday shopping seasons in recent years, when only about 75 people waited for Morgan Hill's Target to open. The store opened at 6 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving last year.
Target's busiest area was far and away the electronics section, where customers waited in another line inside the store to get their hands on marked-down Fujifilm digital cameras and RockBand video games.
One of the most popular items was an Apex 40-inch plasma TV for $449. According to customer Lucy Finegan, Target staff tried to ease the shopping experience by lining up boxes containing the 40-inch screens on top of shopping carts just inside the entrance.
The store's employees also handed out flyers listing the biggest deals and provided store maps to customers waiting in line, according to Finegan, 39 of Morgan Hill, who was third in line when she arrived at 2 a.m. Friday.
Wal-Mart at Cochrane Commons stayed open 24 hours throughout the Thanksgiving holiday, but shoppers there might have had to wait in more than one line, depending on how many bargains they wanted to take advantage of.
Popular advertised items of limited supply that were marked down by half or more (deals known as doorbusters) were covered with sheets of black plastic until the deals took effect at 5 a.m. By about 4:30 a.m., serpentine lines twisted around the store's aisles as shoppers waited for store employees guarding piles of HP laptop computers (for $298), 50-inch plasma HDTVs (for $598) and other items to reveal the uncommon bargains.
Store managers did not allow video or still photography inside the store, and discouraged media contact with customers. The employees also declined to comment on the store's business.
Wal-Mart's media relations department did not respond to phone calls by press time, but similar added security was reported at more of the chain's stores throughout the country, and may have been a response to the death of an employee who was trampled at a Wal-Mart in New York Black Friday last year.
One Wal-Mart customer, who was first in line for a plasma TV, said he had been standing in the same spot - in front of the covered stack of TV boxes, and in between coolers full of cheese and yogurt - since midnight.
Several hundred shoppers were crammed into Wal-Mart by about 4:45 a.m. Navigating shopping carts through the crowds was difficult for some customers.
Nationwide, up to 134 million people are expected to visit retail stores this weekend, according to the National Retail Federation. That's up from last year's Black Friday weekend estimate of 128 million shoppers.
Most shoppers planned to patronize big box retail and department stores such as Wal-Mart and Target, based on the results of a survey conducted by the NRF.
Retail sales for last year's shopping season, which happened amid growing unemployment and a housing crisis, declined 5.3 percent from the previous year, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. That was the first negative growth reported in nationwide holiday sales reported since at least 1998. Sales this year, during November and December, are expected to rise 1 to 2 percent from the same time in 2008, the ICSC projects.
Michael Moore Michael Moore covers county and law enforcement issues for the Morgan Hill Times. Reach him at (408) 779-4106, ext. 202, or mmoore@morganhilltimes.com.
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