Black Friday, Retail | featured news

Sales on the day after Thanksgiving fell from those a year earlier, after stores started their “doorbuster” promotions early in the week and opened for business on Thursday evening.

Put down that turkey leg. It's time to shop. No, really. Stores typically open in the wee hours of the morning on the day after Thanksgiving known as Black Friday, named for the period when stores traditionally turn a profit for the year.

From Los Angeles to Tampa, shoppers are already camping out in front of big-box retailers, determined to be among the first in line for door-buster deals. In Los Angeles, some hardcore consumers have been in line since last Monday, even taking vacation from work in order to save big money. An estimated 147 million Americans will take advantage of Black Friday sales, 4 percent more than last year.

Retail employees launch Change.org petitions against Black Friday sales starting on Thanksgiving, saying it cuts into family celebrations.

It used to be just called Thanksgiving. Now the day is increasingly called Black Friday Eve or Black Thursday, as retailers double down on ever-earlier opening hours for the kickoff of the holiday shopping season.

Amazon launched its Black Friday deals store, joining its rivals who are looking to get an early start on attracting holiday shoppers.

Retailers’ midnight openings last week brought in customers, most big chains said they were pleased with their Black Friday sales, and the November revenue increases at stores open at least a year came in just where analysts had expected, reports showed Thursday.

With the intensity of Black Friday shopping starting to fade, store chains know they are under pressure to keep the sales momentum going as they enter the next phase of a competitive holiday shopping season.

Online sales rose 24.3% this Black Friday, reflecting heavy investment by mainline retailers to get more traction on the Web.

When IBM projected that 15% of Black Friday online sales this year would transact via mobile, a lot of analysts and bloggers, not to mention unprepared retailers, scoffed. To many, it seemed too huge of a jump — after all, as recently as 2009 less than 1% of online sales came from mobile.