Crowds of Shoppers Jam Stores

NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Shopping malls in the tri-state area opened early Friday morning -- many with big sales -- to attract shoppers for the first official day of the holiday shopping season. Hundreds of people lined up outside some stores at midnight waiting for the doors to open. Merchants hope the hordes of shoppers who showed up Friday continue to drop money for the rest of the holiday season.

Macy's at New York's Herald Square was to have opened at 6 a.m., but the store's managers say the crowd was so large they began letting people in at 5:30. Macy's managers also say they're seeing a lot of foreign shoppers, with the weak dollar making holiday bargains look all the better.

Shoppers swarmed stores early Friday to take advantage of early openings, a blitz of door busters and other come-ons designed to launch retailers' crucial holiday shopping season.

Customers lined up outside store doors before dawn on a chilly morning, raced through aisles with extensive shopping lists and strategized to get in as much shopping as possible in the early going.

"If they were selling it, we were buying it,'' Tom Shea, 23, said as he surveyed his purchases at a midtown Manhattan Best Buy store. He said he, some friends and a cousin were the first through the doors when the store opened at 4 a.m.

Shea, of Brooklyn, and two friends spent a total of about $2,500 on two laptop computers, an Xbox game console, a vacuum and several other items. They estimated they had saved about $1,500 _ after waiting for 35 hours outside the Fifth Avenue store to make sure they were first in line, he said.

As Toys "R'' Us Times Square opened at 5 a.m., hundreds of people flooded the store. They quickly formed sometimes fractious lines to buy individual toys and other items.

"What people won't do to save 20 bucks,'' said Judy Fritz, 50. She was among those hoping to snare a bigger bargain -- a Microsoft Zune music player for $79.99, marked down from $199.99, until noon. The demand for the device was so brisk that Fritz feared the store might run out, even though it had been open for only half an hour.

The Las Vegas resident and her husband, Bill, had arrived with a game plan: ``One person plants himself (in a line), and the other person hunts.'' Another Toys "R'' Us shopper, John Hernandez, and his wife, brother and brother-in-law distributed themselves even more widely: "They went to Best buy and Circuit city, and I came here,'' said Hernandez, 31, who lives on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Some shoppers from overseas were reveling in discounts made deeper by exchange rates.

Glenn Branney, of Belfast, Northern Ireland, had timed his visit to New York to coincide with the post-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy, known in retail circles as Black Friday. He spent Thursday relaxing, readying himself for Friday's consumer melee.

Arriving at the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue at 4:30 a.m., he bought an iPod Touch and an iPod Nano, both music and video players. Then he moved on to Macy's, where he had amassed a haul of coats, belts and wallets by 7 a.m.

"I've only just started,'' said Branney, 31, as he stood in a men's department peppered with sale signs and strewn with clothes scattered in the shopping scrum. He said he intended to spend a couple of thousand dollars, perhaps more.

VIDEO: Let the Sales Begin!

"It's fantastic, really, really good,'' he said, adding, "and really cheap.'' His home currency, the British pound, rose to
$2.0716 in morning European trading Friday, up from $2.0634 the day before.

State Police say the traffic jam from shoppers heading to Woodbury Common Premium Outlet in southern Orange County backed up more than 10 miles onto the Thruway early this morning.

Police are directing traffic on Route 32.

Several parking lots within the popular shopping destination in Central Valley were near or at capacity by 11 last night, an hour before stores at the center were slated to open to shoppers seeking Black Friday discounts.

The Times Herald-Record of Middletown reports hundreds waited in lines that wound around buildings and into open areas outside stores including Coach, Lacoste, and Guess.

Black Friday Web Sites:

Black Friday 2007
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DealsPlus

Around the country, stores are counting on hordes of shoppers who have been pulling back in recent months, amid a challenging economy, to snap up bargains. But merchants need them to keep coming back throughout the holiday season to make their sales goals.

"Retailers are worried because they are not sure what is going to grab the customers' attention,'' said C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Retail Group. ``Everybody believes that early specials are the most successful retail events of the year.''

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, threw open its doors at 5 a.m. From 5 a.m. to 12 noon, Toys "R'' Us Inc. offered 101 door busters, four times the number it offered last year.

J.C. Penney Co. opened at 4 a.m., an hour earlier than last year. A growing number of malls opened at midnight, and CompUSA Inc. opened on Thanksgiving Day for the second year in a row.

Realizing that the holiday shopping season would be challenging, stores started discounting weeks ago, with such gimmicks as door busters and expanded hours. While top luxury stores like Saks Fifth Avenue continue to do well, merchants that cater to middle and lower income shoppers have been suffering as consumers struggle with higher gas and food prices, as well as a slumping housing market.

This year, analysts expect sales gains to be the weakest in five years. Washington-based National Retail Federation predicted that total holiday sales will be up 4 percent for the combined November and December period, the slowest growth since a 1.3 percent rise in 2002.

Holiday sales rose 4.6 percent in 2006, and growth has averaged 4.8 percent over the last decade.

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