Black Friday Showdown: Target Takes On Amazon With New In-Store Strategy.
NEW YORK (AP) — Black Friday used to kick off the holiday shopping season, but now that day has taken a backseat to Thanksgiving Day. Assuming you haven’t been stuck under a rock for the last few days, you can’t help but have noticed the barrage of adverts and offers for this year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday.Retailers’ websites, warehouses and delivery services are expected to face record demand today as UK shoppers hunt for Black Friday bargains online rather than on the high street.
The retailers are battling it out, and everyone’s claiming they’ve got better deals on gadgets and gizmos than everyone else, but there’s so much of it out there it’s hard to keep track. TGT 0.37 % stores on Thanksgiving Day to buy toys, electronics and kitchen gadgets, workers inside are getting ready to send some of those very items out the door.
After opening earlier and earlier on the holiday, this year, most of the more than a dozen major retailers like Macy’s, Target and Kohl’s are sticking with their 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. The Minneapolis-based retailer is enlisting small teams of workers in about one-quarter of its 1,800 U.S. stores to pack up some of the orders placed through Target.com earlier in the day.
Whether you’re heading to the shops to stand toe-to-toe with fellow shoppers or planning to indulge on some retail therapy from the comfort of your sofa, FEMAIL has rounded up the hottest bargains to be found in this year’s Black Friday, which is expected to be bigger than ever. Steve Richardson, UK regional director of the shopper monitoring service FootFall, said: “While we’ve seen lots of consumer interest in the buildup to Black Friday, this year marks a shift in retailers’ adoption of the promotional event. It involves retailers cutting the price of their goods to encourage households to get back into shops after the US public holiday and it kickstarts the Christmas shopping period. The employees work in shifts, in a few cases starting up to 10 hours before the official 6 p.m. store opening, navigating dimly lighted aisles and picking items to mail to customers who pounced on Web deals hours before shoppers could in a store. Target launched its 10-day blitz of category-specific deals on 22 November, and Amazon began offering fresh holiday deals as often as every five minutes back on 20 November.
If you love a good deal or are simply planning to bag some early cut-price Christmas presents, our money saving columnist, Kalpana Fitzpatrick, reveals an A to Z of what UK’s top retailers have on offer for this Black Friday frenzy. Some retailers, such as Asda, are scaling back participation entirely, while others are moving away from a single-day flash sale, extending the promotion to ease pressure and spread demand out over a long period.” He said retailers, including big online players such as Argos, Amazon and Littlewoods, had tried to spread their biggest discounts out over a week and that was likely to have reduced demand for deals on Black Friday itself. Lenovo G50 15.6-Inch Laptop Notebook Black: Less than 1″ thick, this laptop is preloaded with intelligent software like VeriFace Pro (face recognition) and Lenovo Energy Manager to extend battery life. £239.99 (save £130) The retailer, which sells large and small electrical appliances, said it would price match all week to ensure customers get the best prices on the products. FootFall is predicting a slight rise in the number of shoppers out and about on Saturday – up 0.5% compared with last year – but a 2% fall on Sunday and a further 0.5% fall on Monday.
Some claim it relates to the fact it is the day when retailers turn a profit for the year and move into the black, while others claim it relates to the markdowns on shop prices. Bosch MCM4250GB Food Processor – White / Silver: Comes with 50 different functions including chopping and blending to save time in the kitchen. £99 (save £50) Beko BDVC100X 100cm Electric Range Cooker – Stainless Steel: With two separate 63-litre fan ovens, heat is circulated evenly to cook faster at lower temperatures. £549 (save £180). Hotpoint Illy Espresso CMHPCGXOUK Pod Coffee Machine – Stainless Steel Look: With an elegant finish and compact design, this promises perfect coffee in 40 seconds. £49 (save £50) Miele Complete C2 Cat And Dog PowerLine Bagged C2CD Cylinder Vacuum Cleaner – Red: Pefect for pet owners, this promises to pick up all the stubborn hairs. £149 (save £100) iPad Air 1 Wi-Fi 16GB Space Grey / Silver: The iPad Air in black is 28% lighter and 20% thinner than the previous iPad and features the new A7 chip. £249 (save £70) iPad Mini 2 16GB – Space Grey / Silver: Identical to iPad Air in every way, except for its super-portable, hold-it-in-one-hand design. £199 (save £40) PS4 with uncharted 500GB bundle: A next generation computer entertainment system that redefines rich and immersive gameplay with powerful graphics and speed. £249.99 (save £50) Peppa Pig Lighthouse Mega Set: Comes with spinning fun ride, speed boat with water ski, life raft, playmat, sand pit and four articulated figures. £19.99 (save over 60%) Toshiba C50D AMD E1 15.6” 4GB 500GB Laptop: A value-packed model for reliable everyday computing performance, it’s a good starter device for teenagers. £179.99 (save £100) Star Wars: The Force Awakens RC BB-8: Big and little kids alike will love this rc BB-8 figure who rolls in any direction and makes expressive droid sounds. £44.99 (save 25%) Nescafe Dolce Gusto Oblo Coffee Machine Black: A fuss free device with 15 bar pump pressure to create coffee shop quality drinks in a matter of seconds. £38.99 (less than half price) After scuffles over electrical items in their stores last year, Asda announced they would be scaling back their Black Friday sale this year in favour of discounts in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
Chateauneuf-du-Pape Magnum: This iconic red wine from the southern Rhone is structured and smooth, with strawberry fruit and spices. £20 (save £9.97) Fillipo Sansovino Prosecco Magnum: A deliciously soft and appley Prosecco from Italy that’s perfect for celebrations or with light fish or pasta dishes. £13 (save £5) Atterley.com aims to make the aspirational accessible by taking note of the key season’s trends and fusing them together with silhouettes that work for the typical (non supermodel) woman. Atterley is king when it comes to turning every day essentials into hero wardrobe items – and better yet, Black Friday means there’s up to 60 per cent off. It revealed that demand for televisions and computers declined last week as shoppers intending to buy held off in anticipation of Black Friday offers. The 41-year-old pastry chef planned to log onto her computer around midnight and hit Target.com for discounted clothes, books and boots for her two teenage daughters, plus anything else she stumbles upon. “Once I start browsing, I find more things that I don’t need but wind up buying anyway,” she says. In fact, according to the National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, nearly 60 percent of holiday shoppers have already started holiday shopping as of Nov. 10.
The holiday used to be celebrated on the last day of November, but retailers lobbied President Roosevelt to move the day forward so there was more time for Christmas shopping. Retailers have boosted the capacity of their websites and hired extra drivers and delivery companies in a bid to cope with demand after many were taken by surprise last year. Then, crucially, in 2013, Asda, which is owned by Walmart, the biggest retailer in the US, started offering deals in its supermarkets, encouraging other retailers to join in. The first stop: Target. “We’ll go look at stuff we couldn’t find online.” The growth in online spending is affecting how one of the nation’s largest retailers operates on one of the busiest and most important shopping days of the year. Jamie Oliver stainless steel 3 piece saucepan set: This extremely durable set is a good cookware investment and it’s a bargain to boot. £61.50 (half price) Jeff Banks white cotton shirt: Man’s pure cotton shirt with double cuffs and pearly cufflinks, available in regular and big and tall. £12.50 (half price) Yves Saint Laurent Black Opium Eau de Parfum, 50ml: With notes of black coffee, vanilla and white florals this is a new twist on an old classic. £53.88 (Save £10.12) Kenwood kMix Barcelona mixer: Features a five litre stainless steel bowl, 500W motor, planetary mixing action, and a range of clever attachments.
The change is born out of a need to cut down on delivery time and shipping costs to keep pace with Amazon.com Inc., AMZN 0.62 % and to put inventory sitting on store shelves to better use by using it to fulfill orders coming from the Internet. “It’s a sign of the times,” says Rodney Sides, a vice chairman at the consultancy Deloitte. “With the shift online, you’ve got to take advantage of the inventory where it is and when you can.” Physical retailers have long grappled with managing the logistics of online sales. There will be an extra £25 off today’s price on Friday. £250 (save £200) Padded coats are all the rage this winter and a Black Padded Belted Coat, which features a non detachable black fur trim hood and popper pockets, has been reduced from £75 to £60.
Unemployment rate has settled into a healthy 5 percent rate, but shoppers still grapple with stagnant wages that are not keeping pace with rising costs for things like rent. The problem stems from a legacy that includes hundreds of stores that must be filled with millions of pieces of inventory and manned by thousands of employees. Maplin aren’t just that shop you go to when you need a plug adapter or a new cable to connect that thing to that other thing, they have a cracking range of cutting edge gadgets at very attractive prices. Asda, the Walmart-owned supermarket that was instrumental in bringing Black Friday to the UK, has opted to spread price cuts over several weeks in the run-up to Christmas after it failed to make a profit from the Black Friday buying frenzy last year. And NRF survey data found that Barbie is the most in-demand character among parents shopping for little girls this year, perhaps good news for Mattel and its new Hello Barbie, which is equipped with voice-recognition software.
Available in size 8-22. £32.50 (half price) With such good savings on offer – one lavishly adorned sequin dress is down from £120 to £60 – you can snap one up for every event through to New Year. On the electronics front, HHGregg has said it expects it to be a “4K holiday,” with many shoppers choosing to upgrade their TVs to sets that boast this sharper picture resolution. (And you can expect many that opt for 4K will be getting it in a huge size.) Based on buzz on social media, Adobe predicts we’ll also see strong sales of wearable devices such as Apple Watches and Fitbits; game consoles such as Playstation 4; and video games such as Minecraft and Halo 5.
New this year at Target: Shoppers who spend $75 or more on Friday will receive a 20 percent discount to use toward a future purchase on any day between Dec. 4 and Dec. 13. They can spread out inventory at a smaller number of locations—Amazon says it has more than 50 distribution centers—and focus on shipping packages. Designed to prompt imaginative play and help develop motor skills. £40 (save £60) Cybex Aton Baby Carseat: Mothercare are offering the carseat free with the purchase of selected pushchairs.
The online giant is compressing shipping times further, with same-day delivery available in 16 metro areas free for members of its Prime service, and offering to deliver orders in as little as an hour in some markets. Retailers call their answer omnichannel, a strategy that views all inventory the same and uses algorithms to calculate whether it makes more sense to ship online orders from a distribution center or a store.
Storch told The Associated Press that the luxury chain considered, and then rejected, opening on Thanksgiving, but it still wanted to do something special for its customers. That said, as we wrote last year, the sales aren’t quite the anarchy these days that you remember seeing on local news broadcasts in the early 2000s.
They say they’ll be matching the prices of all their competitors, and laying on great value offers on laptops, televisions, small and large electricals and more. With many big-box stores using wristbands or tickets to guarantee that the first people in line get the items that they came for, there’s little reason for shoppers to run and shove to get their goods. As the lines between physical and online retailing blur and as shoppers bounce back and forth between the two, most retailers are trying to have more harmony between their online and in-store deals.
Colgate C250 Electric Toothbrush: Multi-directional brush strokes combine with soft, thin tipped bristles, to break up plaque and gently sweep it away. £17.49 (save 65%) Olay Regenerist Regime Gift Pack: Containing Regenerist 3 Point Super Cleansing System, Regenerist 3 Point Treatment Cream, Regenerist Eye Lifting Serum and Regenerist Skin Perfecting Cleanser. £45 (save 54%) Elizabeth Arden Visible Difference Gift Set: Contains Visible Difference Body Care Special Moisture Formula 300ml Visible Difference Refining Moisture Cream Complex 75ml. £20 (save 67%) The biggest cost of shipping from store is labor, analysts say, and holiday-pay rates mean it costs at least 1.5-times more than normal. “Ship from store can turn the model upside down if you’re not careful,” Mr. The prime deals—$249 55-inch televisions and $395 drones with high-definition cameras—are reserved for shoppers in stores, says Eddie Baeb, a spokesman. Robert DeMarino arrived at the Jersey City, N.J., Target store he manages around 7:30 in the morning Thursday to oversee a team of 10 workers on the ship-from-store team.
By mid-morning, the store was well on its way toward hitting its goal of shipping 900 orders, up from 500 on normal days, and getting most of it done before shoppers start to stream in. “This is nice for one day to just not have any distractions,” he says. “We want to make sure that come 6 o’clock, we’re ahead of the game and helping our guests with anything they need in the store.” The strategy is also part necessity.