Click here if you are unable to view the photos on a mobile device.
For the past 35 years, Suzanne Chaves has loved hitting stores with her sister and cousin as early as 3:30 a.m. on Black Friday. They liked the deals, of course, but they would mostly get excited about queuing up with other shoppers and joining the rush when the doors open.
“We didn’t care about the big TVs,” Chaves, of San Leandro, said. “It was the giggles — just more being together. It’s about the craziness. And everyone partaking in the same craziness.”
But with COVID-19 cases surging again in California, Chaves has no intention of participating in any “craziness” this Friday.
This sentiment is shared by a wide range of shoppers interviewed by the Bay Area News Group this past week. Most said they, too, want to stay away from health risks and long lines on what’s traditionally been the frantic start of the holiday shopping season. They overwhelmingly said they plan to do most of their shopping online.
As it turns out, many retailers share shoppers’ concerns about mixing Black Friday and COVID-19, knowing the day traditionally encourages the crowds and jostling that could promote a “super-spreader event,” said Kirthi Kalyanam, a business professor and director of Santa Clara University’s Retail Management Institute. Health officials are concerned, as well.
Big and small retailers in most Bay Area counties are under new public health restrictions to limit their occupancy to 25 percent. The Santa Clara County Public Health Department announced Tuesday that officers would patrol malls and big-box stores on this weekend, prepared to issue citations with fines ranging from $250 to thousands of dollars to businesses that don’t comply with occupancy limits or that don’t make sure customers and employees are wearing masks and socially distancing.
Retailers had already launched promotions to discourage people from descending on their stores this week. Because of these efforts, Kalyanam and other experts say they expect Black Friday shopping to be “muted” — even as the National Retail Federation reported this week that consumers are eager to shop this season after “such a challenging year.”
But much of the predicted 5.2 percent growth in retail sales over last year will largely be tied to online sales, which are expected to grow 20 to 30 percent this year, the federation said.
Pandemic lockdowns in the spring forced brick-and-mortar retailers of all sizes to move more of their sales online. Retailers have stuck to this strategy for the holidays. Starting in October, many national chains began to offer deep, Black Friday-level discounts online to encourage people to start shopping early, or to space out their store visits, said Kristin McGrath, editor of BlackFriday.com.
“The mad in-store dash for TVs and other ‘doorbusters’ in stores won’t be happening this year,” McGrath said. “Even stores that are holding in-store events are making it very clear in their marketing that deals are available online as well.”
Some of these deals prompted Erika Wallace, 20, of Vallejo, to start her Christmas shopping early in Walnut Creek’s Broadway Plaza last week. “With more stores extending their Black Friday deals early, why shop Black Friday?” she said.
The convenience of online shopping also will keep Tien Le, of San Jose, out of the malls on Friday. “There’s no point going shopping on (Black Friday) — when you find the same deals throughout the year anyway,” Le said.
The situation is different for small businesses, which still tend to mostly rely on in-store sales. For the owners of Flashlight independent children’s books store in Walnut Creek, Black Friday was never a big sales day, said owner Shoshana Smith. On the other hand, Smith said, “Small Business Saturday has been great for us.”
Unfortunately, new COVID-19 concerns prompted Flashlight to cancel plans for a sidewalk sale on Small Business Saturday this weekend.
“COVID has cost us all events this year,” said Joe Field, owner of Flying Colors Comics and Other Cool Stuff in Concord. “Black Friday and Small Business Saturday will both be low-key, but I’m confident holiday shoppers will still get a kick out of the cool stuff we have for them that’s not readily available anywhere else.”
Meanwhile, the pandemic has effectively put the kibosh on the trend of large chains opening on the afternoon or evening of Thanksgiving, McGrath said. They realized that encouraging people to shop on a family-oriented holiday during the middle of a pandemic is “a very bad look,” she said.
The 10 p.m.-5 a.m. curfew put in place by Gov. Gavin Newsom also means that stores won’t welcome middle-of-the-night shoppers. Some Bay Area stores will open at 5 a.m.; most will hold off until at least 7 a.m. — though people should check each store’s hours before heading out.
Still, people who’ve mostly been stuck at home the past eight months may want to go out on Black Friday or over the weekend, if only to pick up a luxury item they’ve decided to treat themselves to after a tough year, McGrath said.
A desire to get out — and to take advantage of promotions offered by favorite designers — prompted Betsy Medina of Brentwood to head over to the San Francisco Premium Outlets mall in Livermore on Saturday. She didn’t care about standing in a long line for an hour or more outside the Tory Burch store that snaked around the building. “It’s not that bad today,” she said. “I was here before on a Black Friday, and it was crazier.”
Gokhan Guvener, owner of Massage Chairs & More at Westfield Valley Fair, still expects “good traffic” at his business on Black Friday, while Chris Ramos of Fremont said he definitely wants to shop, and will exercise “practical” precautions: “Wear a mask, stay away from the crowd, use hand sanitizer — just the basic stuff.”
Staff writer Emily DeRuy contributed to this story.
