Black Friday Sales 2008: The Early Bird Retailer Gets the Customers

What happens when retailers stop believing in their own Black Friday early bird specials, door buster bargains, pre-dawn store hours, and general day-after-Thanksgiving feeding frenzy marketing strategies? Black Friday is abandoned and Gray Friday is born.

The retailers who capture the earliest dollars this holiday season will be the retailers who will get the biggest piece of the shrunken holiday shopping budget, or so it seems, given the size of the bargains in this weekend before Thanksgiving.

Toys 'R Us wins the Black Friday early opening race by a week with its 6 am openings this weekend. If the dyslexic logo company has its way, Toys 'R Us will have pocketed all the Wii game, scooter, PS2 and Barbie dollars long before the top secret Wal-mart Black Friday deals are even revealed. (Reportedly Wal-Mart has threatened Black Friday scoop sites with lawsuits for releasing sale details before they hit the company's own website on Monday.)

The mart with the "K" has also been working hard this week to pre-empt its nemesis, Walmart, with 24 pages of "Black Friday pricing today" specials, gift cards, bonuses and rebates. It would suit Kmart just fine if shoppers had nothing left in their holiday budget after committing it all to layaway purchases and blue light specials.

While watching a premature Christmas movie tonight on ABC Family (perhaps the Thanksgiving movies were all shown at Halloween), I was informed about the Old Navy $15 deals, Wolf Camera's free printer offer, and the Payless Shoe Source 50% off sale on holiday shoe styles. The Gap, Old Navy, and Bloomingdale's have staged pre-Black Friday "Friends and Family" sales with their mailing list customers. Sears invited its VIP customers into the store for Black Friday pricing plus an extra 10% off already.

Even New York's Fifth Avenue shoppers are getting treated to Black Friday previews with discount pricing and one-day-only sales, most advertised very discreetly with small fixtures signs and whispers. Not very many Fifth Avenue retailers want to admit that they have to resort to pedestrian retailing practices like discounts. They do have a valid point with that stance. If I can't, or don't want to, buy the raspberry crocodile skin clutch at Neiman Marcus for $1,400, am I really going to be motivated to purchase it because it's marked down to $980? Advertising such things would just seem desperate and tacky.

So, Black Friday, as we have known it, may be a tradition whose time has passed. Once disregarded so widely, it's likely that the day after Thanksgiving will gradually lose its retail significance altogether. With Christmas decorations immediately replacing Halloween costumes on store shelves, and Gray Friday Sales launched well before the day after Thanksgiving, could the Macy's Columbus Day Parade be far behind?