Eager Shoppers Ring It Up on 'Red-Eye Thursday'

By Ylan Q. Mui
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 25, 2006

At midnight yesterday, 30-something gal pals Tracey Oskey and Jodi Weier kicked off their Black Friday shopping spree in classic Washington style: stuck in traffic.

"Oh my God, this is insane," Oskey said as she stared down the stretch of red tail lights on Route 7 in Loudoun County headed toward Leesburg Corner Premium Outlets.

The 5 a.m. early bird special is so last year. For the first time, retailers across the country threw open their doors at 12 a.m. to throngs of shoppers, turning the day after Thanksgiving into a nearly 24-hour shopping smorgasbord.

"I don't even call it Black Friday anymore. I'm calling it red-eye Thursday," said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at consulting firm NPD Group, who hit several midnight openings and early bird specials. "I feel like I'm in college pulling an all-nighter."

Black Friday is the symbolic start of the holiday shopping season, when retailers showcase door-busting discounts on everything from plasma TV sets to Barbies as they jockey for customers and, perhaps more importantly, buzz. A successful day can give a retailer momentum that will last until Christmas. Midnight openings are the latest craze, luring shoppers before they have barely digested their turkey.

"Sales are important, but they're secondary. It's about getting the people" said Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation, a trade group. "Retailers hope that the people who came into their stores today will be back throughout the holiday."

Black Friday earned its nickname because it marks the day when retailers traditionally went from losing money to making a profit, or being in the black. The research firm ShopperTrak predicts that yesterday's foot traffic will be the second-heaviest of the year, following the Saturday before Christmas. By Sunday, retailers expect to have seen 137 million people, up about 2 million from last year, according to the NRF.

Oskey's husband was out of town on a business trip for the phone installation company they run together, Telforward. So her parents came to her home in Tysons Corner at noon on Thursday for turkey and stuffing. They were out the door by 5:30.

Oskey threw some clothes into a backpack and headed west to Loudoun County, where she had booked a shop-and-stay package that Lansdowne Resort, near the outlets, was marketing for the midnight opening. Weier met her at the hotel, and by 9 p.m. they settled in with a bottle of merlot from the minibar and "Grey's Anatomy" on the television.

By 10:45, they were visibly dragging.

"I said that I can make it," Oskey announced in a determined voice as she mapped out her plan of attack in the hotel lobby.

A second wind arrived in the form of hot tea, coffee and a booklet of coupons -- part of the hotel package. Oskey made one last stop at her room to dump off her belongings before heading to the outlets. She pocketed her credit card and driver's license and walked out the door, unencumbered by a purse.

A hotel shuttle took the girlfriends and a handful of other shoppers who had booked the package trip to the outlets, circumventing parking lots that were full shortly after midnight. The bumper-to-bumper traffic was forgotten at the first rack of clothes at the first store Oskey entered.

"C'mon now, $9.99? This rocks!" she said as she sorted through a rack of men's fleece jackets at Haggar. "Are you only allowed one per customer?"

It was 12:30 a.m., and the line at the lone cash register was already seven people deep -- one of the shortest lines of the night.

The Leesburg outlets were among 25 shopping centers around the country run by Chelsea Property Group to open at midnight. After a successful test at seven locations last year, the company expanded the midnight opening to almost all of its properties.

"It created a lot of excitement to get people to come to us first," said Michele Rothstein, a Chelsea Property spokeswoman. "We're all out there trying to capture the attention and the spending of customers."

Eight malls owned by Greensboro, N.C.-based Tanger Factory Outlet Centers opened at midnight, as did a dozen run by Baltimore-based Prime Retail Inc., including one in Hagerstown.

Retailers said they would not begin tallying the number of shoppers until today but that anecdotal reports indicated strong traffic. Wal-Mart's Web site crashed yesterday because of high volume. Jim Martin, vice president of ShopperTrak, said he expected yesterday's traffic to be comparable to last year's. Early openings might not draw more shoppers but spread them throughout the day, he said.

Some retailers even opened on Thanksgiving Day. CompUSA was open from 9 p.m. to midnight. Kmart checked out shoppers from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., following a long-standing tradition. Gail Lavielle, a Kmart spokeswoman, said that customers "like having different alternatives and being able to shop all weekend."

But locked doors and dark windows weren't enough to stop some people from showing up to cash in on yesterday's blockbuster promotions. About a dozen shoppers arrived at Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax at 11 p.m. on Thursday, reported parent company Taubman Centers, to claim spots in line at Elite Boardshop and Sears -- which opened at 5 a.m. and offered a plasma TV for $1,199.99.

Showing up at 4:30 a.m. meant you were downright late. That's when Jae Shim, 41, of Olney arrived at Best Buy in Germantown, where a long line had beat him. He and a friend waited two hours to get inside and another two hours to pay for a DVD player, video games and some movies.

"What we wanted we didn't even get," said Shim, who wanted to snag a Hewlett-Packard laptop for $380. "We could barely get in the store. It was crazy. They said, 'We're out of this; we're out of that.' "

Meanwhile, Oskey was blowing through her Christmas list of about two dozen people long before other retailers flicked on their lights. But even she had her limits. She quickly dashed out of Pottery Barn after seeing that the line wrapped around half the store.

"There's nothing in here I want that bad," she said.

By 3 a.m., she was back in bed. Her list was all checked off, and the only thing left to do in the morning was get a massage and mani-pedi at the hotel spa.

Staff writer Dana Hedgpeth contributed to this report.