Ryan ChartrandThe holiday shopping season kicked off last Friday with an estimated 25 million more consumers heading to the stores on Black Friday than last year, according to a National Retail Federation study and San Luis Obispo saw its share of shoppers lining up to get the first picks of this year’s hot items too.
“We had probably about 200 people,” said Micky Jolles, a sales and installation manager at Circuit City in the Irish Hills shopping center. “We were letting people in slowly but surely at about 25 people a time.”
Jolles said that the top items being sold at the San Luis Obispo store were the iPod touch as well as flat-screen televisions and laptop computers.
Across the parking lot was a different story.
“When I got there, there was a couple people, maybe 10, if that,” said Mariel Aceves, an agricultural science senior who works at Old Navy.
She said that she had arrived to work at 7 a.m. – two hours after the store opened – and foot traffic to the store was not particularly heavy.
“There was a constant stream of people “but it wasn’t terrible,” Aceves said. “It wasn’t insanely packed with people fighting each other for clothes. ”
She said her manager told her that there were a couple of people waiting outside when the store opened but that it was “just a handful.”
Opening its doors around the time Aceves was arriving to work was neighboring business PetSmart.
“There was not a single customer at PetSmart at 7 a.m.,” store operations manager Paul Williams said.
Williams said that neighboring stores such as Old Navy, Circuit City, Linen’s and Things and Costco all had people waiting in line for the stores to open.
“It was very unexpected for Costco to have any kind of line outside because I thought they were already at rock-bottom prices,” Williams said. “Costco was handing out a coupon book at the door. It was mostly plasma TVs that were being bought . a lot of electronics were going out the door, not necessarily food items or the bulk items that people normally purchase from Costco.”
Williams wasn’t surprised that PetSmart wasn’t as busy as some of the other retail stores in the complex because he said that consumers tend to shop for other “human family members” before making purchases for their pets.
“I think people tend to spend a little more money on pets after the holidays,” he said.
He added that the Irish Hills put out advertising a little late this year but that other stores didn’t seem to suffer from it.
“Unfortunately, we just didn’t see the traffic,” Williams said.
One store that saw an increase in traffic, but not necessarily sales was BevMo!.
“We had a lot of stop-bys,” said BevMo! assistant manager Steve Garcia.
Garcia said many people were in town for the holidays and that he noticed more families coming in to browse for non-alcoholic items such as gift cards, glasses and food items.
“They were probably getting ideas for their dinner parties or Christmas parties,” he said.
One popular item that Garcia said was requested more on Black Friday was a licorice-flavored drink called Absinthe.
“Absinthe has been a nice seller,” he said. “People are looking for that warm drink for the winter.
Garcia added that big sellers for this time of year are gift cards to the store.
“That’s a little more common now than the non-holiday (season),” he said.