Staff and wire reports
The Star-Herald
KOSCIUSKO —
Local chain retailers saw crowds of shoppers on Thanksgiving evening and Black Friday morning.
“We had a really a really big turnout,” Dana Breazeale, Goody’s supervisor, said.
Touting over 300 “door buster” sales in small electronics, cosmetics, footwear, toys, jewelry and more, Goody’s in Kosciusko saw many shoppers from 8 p.m. to midnight Thanksgiving night and then re-opened at 6 a.m. on Black Friday with continued door busters and giveaways.
The biggest sellers of Goody’s event, were the 7-inch Android tablets.
Breazeale said the store was sold out of the tablets in about 10 minutes.
Another big seller were the ladies fashion boots, priced at $19.99, Breazeale said.
The Thanksgiving night was a new addition to Goody’s regular Black Friday sale.
Breazeale said that everything went as planned during the sales.
“We were pretty packed both days,” she said.
Saturday's report from retail technology company ShopperTrak finds consumers spent $11.2 billion at stores across the U.S. That is down 1.8 percent from last year's total.
This year's Friday results appear to have been tempered by hundreds of thousands of shoppers hitting sales Thursday evening across the nation while still full of Thanksgiving dinner. Retailers including Sears, Target and Wal-Mart got their deals rolling as early as 8 p.m. on Turkey Day.
At the Kosciusko Wal-Mart, shoppers crowded the aisles picking up deals from $1.96 DVDs to $399 iPad 2.
ShopperTrak said retail foot traffic increased 3.5 percent, to more than 307.67 million store visits, indicating at least some shoppers were browsing but not spending freely.
"Black Friday continues to be an important day in retail," said ShopperTrak founder Bill Martin. "This year, though, more retailers than last year began their doorbuster deals on Thursday, Thanksgiving itself. So while foot traffic did increase on Friday, those Thursday deals attracted some of the spending that's usually meant for Friday."
