Deep Discounts Lure Denver Shoppers From The Couch
DENVER (CBS4) - Not all shoppers flocked to open stores on Thanksgiving for a holiday-shopping jumpstart.
Some still needed Thanksgiving supplies.
"We needed to get an extra table and some chairs and silverware and table cloth," shopper Gianna Malak said.
But most at a Denver Kmart on Thursday maneuvered their carts down the aisles to snag deep discounts on electronics, clothes, toys and other so-called door-busters.
Many retailers -- including Kmart, Macy's, Target, Radio Shack, Best Buy, Toys R Us and Sears -- opened early or in the evening to lure shoppers looking for deals.
In case shoppers needed any more prodding, Stephen Zitek, the store manager of the Kmart at Alameda Avenue and Broadway, was advertising his store's deals on Thursday: "We have pretty good sales on TVs, Blu-Ray players are half-off. Kitchen appliances are pretty reduced prices."
Kmart turned on the lights at 6 a.m. and will be open for 42 hours in a row.
The retailer's strategy hopes to capitalize on shopper's appetites; a Retail Me Not survey says Thanksgiving is the preferred holiday shopping day, ahead of Black Friday, the day-after-Thanksgiving spree that was traditionally the first shopping day of the Christmas season.
Across the city at a Best Buy on Colorado Boulevard, shopper Taj Laugin staked the first spot in line on Wednesday at 2 p.m. He waited through the cold until the store opened. By that point, a line with hundreds snaked around the store's corner.
"My toes were cold," the lightly clothed Laugin said. "I thought I'd be fine. But as I felt the temperature dropping, it was getting worse and worse."
Shoppers said they put their Thanksgiving dinners on hold.
"Turkey is cooking in the oven. Maybe when I get back, maybe it's ready to go, to have dinner and have a good time with the family," Francisco Torres said.
The National Retail Federation predicts holiday sales will total more than $616 billion this year, a 1.4 percent increase from 2013. And shoppers plan to spend an average of $196 per person on gifts in 2014.
"Walmart, Kmart have the good deals," shopper Rogelio Borges said.
The average discount on Thanksgiving and Black Friday was 37 percent in 2013, Retail Me Not says.
Consumers report a higher savings on Thanksgiving Day with $57 saved per purchase. On Black Friday, it the discount was $27 per purchase.
For bargain-hunters who eschew the stores and instead patrol the Web for deals, Thanksgiving might be the ideal shopping day.
Analysts at Adobe crunched the numbers and indicated that online retailers will discount items by 24 percent on Thursday, 23 percent on Black Friday and 20 percent on Cyber Monday.
