Thursday start affects Friday shopping

An early start on Black Friday changed the traffic local stores saw during the official kickoff of the Christmas shopping season.

Jill Pickett

A Kohl's employee directs the next customer in the check-out line to an open register Friday in Elizabethtown.

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Jill Pickett

Janie Goode looks over items at Michaels as she shops Friday in Elizabethtown.

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Jill Pickett

J.C. Penney Co. employee Emily Blakeman scans Carla Burns' purchases Friday in Elizabethtown.

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Some stores opened earlier this year, pushing the first Black Friday sales promotions into Thanksgiving Day. With large retailers like Walmart and Target opening Thursday evening, other stores saw a change in the number of shoppers on Friday.

Kohl’s opened at midnight Friday and manager Krista Shipley said its doorbuster sales brought in a lot of people.

After a lull during the night, the number of shoppers was starting to increase again Friday morning. But Shipley said she didn’t know what the rest of the day would be like.

“This year it’s kind of unpredictable with the changes in other stores’ opening time,” she said. Shipley said the changes other stores made affected their traffic for the better.

“It seemed like there were a lot of people out,” she said.

Janie Goode hasn’t participated in Black Friday shopping in a few years, but she and a friend decided to make the most of the extended shopping hours this year. By the time they reached Michaels on Friday morning, they had been going strong since the previous morning. After starting Thursday morning with breakfast at Cracker Barrel, they shopped through the day and into the night.

“We shop slow,” Goode said with a chuckle.

The sales didn’t draw Goode out as much as the camaraderie of the event.

“Standing in line, you get to meet everybody,” she said.

Michaels was open two extra hours Thursday as compared to last year, store manager Joe Walker said. Thanksgiving had so far been a busier day than Friday. But he said Thursday evening was slow for them because other stores opened that night.

“We think it affected our sales pattern,” he said.

Not everyone made it a marathon. Karen Wimsatt was shopping with her daughter at Kohl’s on Friday morning, but the pair hadn’t been there very long.

“We do it every year,” she said. “We’re just not the early birds.”

There’s a reason that they don’t commit to the early hours.

“We like our sleep,” she said.

Kelly Cantrall can be reached at (270) 505-1747 or kcantrall@thenewsenterprise.com.