‘Does anybody really know?’: Retailers plan for an uncertain Black Friday as COVID surges - MassLive.com

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HOLYOKE — Black Friday, the shopping holiday named for its ability to put retailers “in the black” for a profitable year, traditionally features shoppers huddled outside store entrances, awaiting the stroke of midnight.

“That won’t be happening this year,” said Lisa Wray, marketing manager at the Holyoke Mall at Ingleside.

There, like at a lot of shopping centers, stores have been running “Black Friday” promotions all through the month of November. Store opening times are staggered through the morning Friday so people don’t all arrive and bunch up at the same time.

Those are just some of the precautions retailers are taking against the spread of COVID-19.

Even Walmart, where holiday doorbusters are a tradition, is promoting Black Friday sales all month to avoid large crowds on the day itself, according to a news release.

A low-key Black Friday also continues a recent trend of shoppers looking online, and to sales that start weeks earlier instead of special early morning deals.

Most stores around the country are closing on Thanksgiving Day. That isn’t a big change for shoppers in Massachusetts, where Blue Laws kept most stores closed on the holiday anyway. Instead, shoppers waited for stores that opened at midnight on Friday.

But even pre-pandemic crowds hadn’t been as big in recent years as they once were.

“I would say Black Friday hasn’t been what it had been for some years now,” said Lynn Gray, general manager at Hampshire Mall.

A sister property to Holyoke, the Hampshire Mall is also owned by Syracuse-based Pyramid Companies.

Hand sanitizing stations are available at all entrances and other locations at the Holyoke Mall. (Don Treeger / The Republican)

Both Gray and Wray described precautions their facilities have taken in concert with public health officials. There are distance markers on the floor, masks are required and hand sanitizer is available.

In 2019, a record 189.6 million U.S. consumers shopped from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, the National Retail Federation said. But Cyber Monday, an online shopping promotion, has gained a bigger and bigger slice of that spending pie.

Last year’s survey found that 124 million people shopped in stores while 142.2 million shopped on retailers’ websites; 75.7 million did both.

Shoppers spent an average $361.90 on holiday items over the five-day period, up 16% from $313.29 during the same period in 2018.

Half of all consumers say they not likely at all to shop on Black Friday this year, according to a survey released weeks ago by the National Retail Federation. Another 20% said somewhat unlikely, 19% said somewhat likely and only 11 % said they were very likely.

But that survey happened before COVID-19 spiked again here and around the country, and before the introduction of more shutdown orders and conditions against holiday travel.

Earlier this week, the National Retail Federation said it forecasted sales during November and December will increase between 3.6% and 5.2% over 2019 to a total between $755.3 billion and $766.7 billion. The numbers, which exclude automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurants, compare with a an increase last year of 4%, to $729.1 billion, and an average holiday sales increase of 3.5% over the past five years.

That leaves retailers wondering if, and in what numbers, shoppers will be out Friday.

“Does anybody really know?” said Steve Walker of The Longmeadow Shops, where he is a regional property manager for owners Grove Property Fund. “We are just trying to make sure everybody who comes here is as safe as they can be.”

The Longmeadow Shops is an open-air shopping center with stores fronting an outdoor sidewalk.

“So being open air, I think, helps us,” Walker said.

And the retailers in The Longmeadow Shops — a list that includes trendy clothing store Lululemon — are doing well. The complex is not an early-morning shopping destination where folks search out doorbusters. Instead, crowds tend to build up at mid-morning, Walker said.

In Agawam, Kate Gourde, owner of Cooper’s Gifts, said her goal is to spread out the business evenly and keep crowds manageable.

“I don’t want people to feel like they have to be here at a certain time,” she said. “So far, I can have 25 people in the store at one time. But that includes my staff. In the past, I’d have 60, 80, 100 customers in the store on a busy holiday shopping Saturday. That won’t do in this time of COVID.”

In past years, she said, “Small Business Saturday” — the national promotion on the Saturday after Thanksgiving — has been her busiest day by far. This year, she’ll rely on what she called “Small Business Saturdays” every weekend from n ow until Christmas.

American Express started Small Business Saturday in 2010 — during the last recession — as a national effort reminding Holiday shoppers to patronize local business.

This year, American Express says 62% of U.S. small businesses tell the credit card issuer that they need consumer spending to return to pre-COVID levels by the end of 2020 in order to stay in business.

Also busy is Santa. Wray said he’ll be at Holyoke Mall this year, but he’ll be wearing a mask and kids can’t sit on his lap. Instead, they’ll be able to talk to him from a chair positioned a few feet away. That goes for both Pyramid malls in Western Massachusetts.

“But the way we have the chair set up, they can get their picture with the Big Guy,” Gray said.

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