Black Friday is still a big deal, but Fresno shoppers feel less crowded, stressed
Cool and cloudy weather did little to dampen the enthusiasm for Black Friday shoppers who flocked to Fresno shopping centers for holiday deals on what is traditionally the biggest day of the year for retailers.
What has in years past been a frantic scene of harried shoppers prowling parking lots in search of a parking space and then bouncing from store to store in search of doorbuster deals was, by most accounts mid-morning Friday, a relatively calm affair.
“We were thinking it was going to be really crowded and busy,” said Larriann Torrez of Lindsay, who with her “shopping buddy” and family member Pat Smith of Bakersfield were roaming the shops at Fig Garden Village in northwest Fresno. The pair, both visiting family in Clovis for the Thanksgiving holiday, were pleasantly surprised at what Torrez described as “really a very relaxing atmosphere.”
A few miles away, outside the big-box retailers of the River Park Shopping Center on north Blackstone Avenue, other shoppers reported similar experiences – not exactly sedate, mind you, but not as bad as they had feared.
“Black Friday this year is nothing like it was four or five years ago,” said Kelly Calcagno of Coarsegold, who was shopping with family with her 18-month-old son Cooper in tow. “Years ago it was crazy, and people standing in line and pushing and shoving like you see in the videos. But then the past few years it’s not any different than a regular Saturday in River Park. … The more crazy time is Thanksgiving night.”
“For us, this is just a girls’ day” that Calcagno said started with bagels and coffee at about 8 a.m., followed by shopping. The wallet workout was to be followed by lunch across the street at California Pizza Kitchen.
Last year, Calcagno added, almost most of her shopping was done online, on Cyber Monday. “We like to do online shopping and Cyber Monday, and Amazon makes it too easy,” she said. Calcagno is among a growing number of shoppers who are doing plenty of their holiday purchasing online, through Amazon and other e-commerce retailers.
For Leah and Steve Orlando of Fresno, one of the more stressful parts of the day may have been searching for their vehicle in the sprawling River Park parking lot after picking up some gifts at Dick’s Sporting Goods and Target.
Steve Orlando said it was his first time venturing out for Black Friday shopping; his wife Leah said she’s done some Black Friday shopping in prior years in San Francisco, but this was their time in Fresno. While some hardcore deal-seekers came out on Thanksgiving day or early Friday, the Orlandos got a relatively late start. “We were going to come out at 6 a.m., but we actually got started at about 8 a.m.,” Leah Orlando said.
They had done some online research to see what stores had the merchandise they wanted. “We did our gift list and figured it out from there,” Steve Orlando said. But that wasn’t the limit of their online work. Like Calcagno and many other shoppers, the couple have also been buying things online – something to which Steve Orlando attributed the less-than-expected stress of their Black Friday outing.
“Even when we were waiting in line, we were on our phones putting things in our online carts,” Leah Orlando added.
For Evonne and David Ruiz of Madera, River Park was merely the first stop for a shopping strategy they had mapped out the day before. “We look at the ads online and make a ‘hit list’ of places we want to go” Evonne Ruiz said. “As our kids get older, they know more or less what they want,” which makes online shopping more convenient.
But when there’s less gift certainty, David Ruiz said, it’s helpful to actually visit a store and see the merchandise before buying. And compared to previous years, the Ruizes said they expect to spend “a little less” on holiday shopping this year.
The convenience of online shopping is what led Richard Soza of Fresno to the Best Buy store at River Park. He’d already ordered the 40-inch television that he wanted, and came to the store to pick up the merchandise without having to endure a long checkout line at the cash register.
“It’s just easier,” he said. “You don’t have to deal with all the people and you don’t have to deal with the lines.”
Retail giant Amazon, which has a large e-commerce order-filling center in Fresno, wasn’t sharing details on how many online orders it was receiving on Black Friday, or on Thursday either, for that matter. A spokeswoman told The Bee only that “Amazon is on pace to surpass Black Friday 2018 worldwide, in terms of items ordered.”
Adobe Analytics reported that as of 7 a.m. Friday, online shoppers in the U.S. had spent about $767 million in Black Friday purchases. The company predicted that Black Friday sales online would ultimately reach about $7.5 billion. Adobe also reported that online retailers pulled in about $4.2 billion in sales on Thanksgiving Day.
Including Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and upcoming Cyber Monday, Adobe Analytics forecast that online sales in the U.S. would reach about $143 billion during the two-month holiday shopping season from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31. That’s up from about $126 billion in 2018.
The National Retail Federation said it expected more than 165 million people to shop over the five-day period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, Dec. 2. Total spending, both in brick-and-mortar stores and online, is forecast to be about $730 billion between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31.
Because Thanksgiving this year fell on the last Thursday of November, the traditional peak shopping period between Thanksgiving and Christmas is six days shorter for customers. The National Retail Federation said its survey of shoppers earlier this month indicated that more than half of consumers had already started their holiday shopping well before Black Friday, lured by deals from retailers trying to compensate for the shorter season.
This story was originally published November 29, 2019 at 3:28 PM.
