Big Sales Lure Consumers to Stores, Screens

Optimistic consumers took to the malls, the streets and their home computers this Thanksgiving weekend in strong numbers, reassurance that an 11-month American shopping spree is not finished and a reminder that the Web is a growing part of the overall retail picture.

The weekend, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, seemed to maintain a decades-long tradition of being as much a social and cultural event as a sales engine, though few sales numbers will be available until the beginning of next month.

Procrastinators and value-hunters make the Saturday before Christmas the biggest shopping day of the year, but the long Thanksgiving weekend both is symbolically important and has some of the year’s highest-traffic days, with browsers and serious shoppers flooding the stores to welcome in the Christmas season.

Based on an outside company’s nationwide survey of 200 malls, the International Council of Shopping Centers said about 22% of the U.S. population, or more than 61 million people, went to a mall Friday. The National Retail Traffic Index reported 47 million people in shopping centers Saturday, the mall trade group said.

“When we factor out the sales quirks from any given weekend or week, this season will be 4% to 6% above last year, I have no doubt in that,” said John Konarski, International Council of Shopping Centers vice president.

TeleCheck Services Inc., a check-acceptance company, reported a Friday gain of 6.4% nationwide, as compared with a year ago, and a 5.9% increase in the West.

The inclination to shop spilled over into the virtual world, as consumers accustomed to buying goods the weekend after the November holiday swamped the Web at the scripted annual shopping time--and flooded a few sites unable to handle the traffic, such as KBKids.com, which continued to have problems Sunday.

“For Internet shoppers, it also seemed to be the start of the season,” said Michael Goldstein, chairman and chief executive of Toys R Us, who said the company’s nascent Web site had a strong day Thursday and its best day ever Friday. “It surprised me--you think of the weekend as a time to visit stores, and the stores were busy.”

Retail analysts and economists have predicted sales gains of between 3% and 6% as compared with last year. At accounting firm Ernst & Young, Stephanie Shern, global vice chairman of the retail and consumer products group, said she expects holiday spending to reach $185 billion for 1999, up from $175 billion last year. Internet sales, which last year accounted for more than $3 billion, could range between $6 billion and $12 billion, analysts say.

But even in these strong economic times, with an astounding average so far of about 6% month-over-month growth in sales from stores open at least a year, customers had value in mind.

Wal-Mart’s $99 televisions; Toys R Us’ free Pokemon mats; Sears, Roebuck & Co.’s half-off tools promotion; and a variety of other door busters and early-bird sales at stores across the retail spectrum drew shoppers in droves.

Shopping seemed to follow the pattern of previous months, with specialty and discount stores indicating strong sales and department stores expressing less enthusiasm, analysts said. Macy’s Western division, however, said it had a great weekend and did better than anticipated.

“Many people use this weekend to prepare shopping lists, so I would not necessarily say that department stores will come out poorly,” said Kurt Barnard, president of Barnard’s Retail Trend Report. “But when we spoke with department stores, people seemed to be more circumspect than others who were downright jubilant about sales.”

NetRatings Inc., which measures traffic to Web sites based on surveys of home Internet users, said online retail traffic increased 25% between Friday, Nov. 19, and the Friday after Thanksgiving.

NetRatings found a 90% traffic boost Friday as compared with the previous Friday. Toy retailers saw their visitor numbers rise by 51%.

Online retailers generally see higher sales during the week than on weekends, as people use company computers to shop. The day after Thanksgiving, however, proved to be a record-breaker for some. Toysmart.com Inc. said its Friday sales doubled compared with Tuesday, the online retailer’s previous record-sales day, said Chief Executive David Lord.

In the online toy war, Santa Monica-based EToys Inc. had more visitors Friday than ToysRUs.com, according to NetRatings.

The online flood caught some e-tailers off guard and offline. KBKids.com limped out of the gate Thursday when its site, operated by Consolidated Stores Corp., had to turn eager Thanksgiving Day shoppers away when they began swamping the site. Problems continued on and off through the weekend.