Lifestyles
Earning It? Spending It? Holiday Season Is About To Begin
November 15, 2007
By Craig Bodenschatz
As holiday shopping officially begins next Friday, retailers gear up for holidays by overloading staff and slashing prices.
Friday, Nov. 23, the day after Thanksgiving, marks the beginning of the Christmas season rush for retail stores, especially local malls, which function as the hub of seasonal commercialism. This day is known as Black Friday because the name reflects the trend for businesses to “move into the black,” or gain a positive income for the fiscal year. Preparations for Black Friday begin with great increases in hiring and massive, temporary price cuts for the holidays.
Short-term hiring usually begins in mid-October, and businesses temporarily employ up to twice the average number of associates. Though the retailers begin looking for seasonal hires in October, “temps” usually start in mid-November and work until the Saturday after Christmas.
Roger Swartzendruber, a manager at Chesterfield Mall, said that he typically brings in up to 20 new people for the holidays and retains 8-10 of them as part-timers after the season concludes. Decisions on whom to offer continued employment is based on factors like team work, multitasking ability and attitude.
The new hire’s main duty is to accommodate for the heavy day-after-Thanksgiving traffic—usually four times the average number of customers. However, the hectic atmosphere of a store during Black Friday depends on the promotions being run.
Typically, soft-line (clothing-type) stores illicit business by offering special percentage- or dollar amount-discounts. Hardline retailers like Barnes and Noble, Macy’s and Wal-Mart, which are larger scale and offer a great variety of merchandise, often use giveaways and big discounts for early shoppers.
Having experienced Black Friday’s in both soft- and hard-line markets, Swartzendruber said that he prefers the smaller, clothing-associated atmosphere. “Since I’ve been in softlines, customers seem really happy about any promotions.”
Since the sale of the Westfield Shopping Center this fall, questions concerning shopping times for local malls have arisen. By all accounts, opening and closing times will be the same as previous years, generally, 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. Some exceptions include larger stores like Macy’s, which will open at 6 a.m., and Sears, which will open at 5 a.m.
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