‘This is different.’ How coronavirus changed Black Friday shopping in Fresno
Black Friday?
More like a slow Tuesday.
The coronavirus pandemic kept many people home for the traditional kickoff to the holiday shopping season. People came out to shop, but there weren’t huge crowds early in the morning like in years past, leaving it looking something like an average weekday.
About 30 shoppers showed up for the 7 a.m. opening of the Target store at Blackstone and Bullard avenues. Everyone wore a mask, and waited in line 6 feet from each other.
With Fresno County in the purple tier of COVID-19 restrictions, stores can only have 25% of their maximum capacity of shoppers at a time.
Fashion Fair opened at 6 a.m., and although there were people waiting to get in, by 7:30 a.m. the mall still hadn’t reached 25% capacity.
There was no line at that time outside Victoria’s Secret, which is typically the most mobbed portion of the mall on Black Friday.
“This is different,” said Sherri Potter of Fresno. “You’re not going to see the crowds that you saw last year.”
She hit up several stores looking for deals on bed sheets and toys from Star Wars’ show The Mandalorian. She said she felt safe “as long as everyone does their part” by wearing masks and keeping their distance.
Business throughout Fresno picked up later in the day, with a long line of people waiting to get into Best Buy in River Park. Fashion Fair got busier too, with people having difficulty finding a parking spot.
The mall blocked off 20% of its parking lot to help prevent crowds.
PlayStation 5 seekers out and about
The one place there were lines from early in the day? GameStop stores.
The highly anticipated PlayStation 5 gaming console has sold out at most online retailers, inspiring shoppers to turn to stores instead.
Well over 100 shoppers waited outside the Clovis GameStop, with one man beginning the line at 4 a.m. Thursday.
Over at Fashion Fair, a small crowd showed up at the GameStop store inside the mall – but there were no PlayStations to be had.
Couple Ozzy Beltran and Jay Chavez of Fresno showed up at 5:30 a.m. hoping to a score a PlayStation 5.
“They announced right there there were no Xboxes, no PS 5s,” Beltran said. “Almost half the line left.”
Rein Johnson and her daughter Laraya Rodgers of Fresno arrived at 1 a.m. hoping to get a PlayStation and were told they couldn’t line up outside the store until 4 a.m. They waited in their car until the store’s 6 a.m. opening.
But they left empty handed. By 7:30 a.m. Johnson was taking a break, sitting on the floor inside the mall wrapped in blanket outside women’s clothing store Windsor. She was waiting for it to open at 8 a.m. because she saw a dress she liked through the window. She was determined to make at least one purchase.
“This will not be wasted,” she said.
Johnson has shopped Black Friday in the past, and said this one just didn’t feel the same.
“This is sad,” she said. “It doesn’t have the joy and the excitement of Black Friday.”
In-store Black Friday dying, going online
For regular Black Friday shoppers, the smaller crowds weren’t that much of a surprise.
The day has been shrinking for years as people shop online and retailers offer deals long before what used to be a huge one-day event.
But Black Friday isn’t dead. It just moved online.
Online shopping on Thanksgiving Day 2020 brought in a record-breaking $5.1 billion, nearly a 22% increase from online sales last year, according to data tracked by Adobe Analytics.
It’s too early to tell how much people spent online on Black Friday, but the company is predicting anywhere between a 20% and a 42% increase.
The National Retail Federation predicts sales throughout the holiday season – both in store and online – will rise between 3.6% and 5.2%. However, some other research firms are predicting people will spend a little less this year.
The pandemic has led to layoffs of workers in some sectors, and uncertainty about the future is making people worried about their finances, according to technology firm Digital Remedy.
But most are still shopping, said NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz in a news release.
“After all they’ve been through, we think there’s going to be a psychological factor that they owe it to themselves and their families to have a better-than-normal holiday,” he said.
This story was originally published November 27, 2020 at 10:57 AM.
