Red-eyed, pajama-wearing shoppers left Morgan Hill’s two largest
retail stores with big-screen televisions, outerwear, digital
cameras, toys and weary smiles after scoring the biggest bargains
of the year on some of the holiday season’s most sought-after
gifts.
Red-eyed, pajama-wearing shoppers left Morgan Hill’s two largest retail stores with big-screen televisions, outerwear, digital cameras, toys and weary smiles after scoring the biggest bargains of the year on some of the holiday season’s most sought-after gifts.
But city officials don’t expect to see a corresponding jump in sales tax revenues as they would in a normal year.
Olga Perez had a shopping cart full of radio-controlled Hummers and other toys at Target in Cochrane Plaza Friday. Perez came to Morgan Hill from Los Angeles just to try to start – and finish – her Christmas shopping in one day.
“You don’t want to try to go shopping today in Los Angeles,” Perez said about 5:30 a.m., comparing the relatively light crowds locally to those expected in the sprawled-out southern metropolis.
Target opened four hours earlier than usual at 5 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving. Annually known as Black Friday, the day marks the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season and when high customer traffic pushes many stores’ ledgers into positive territory each year.
David Patrick, a Morgan Hill native, bought a brand new 32-inch LCD screen TV for $240 – about a 50 percent discount.
“It’s for my dorm room,” said Patrick, who was on vacation from school at Virginia Tech University.
Target manager Tiffany Morneau expects about 10,000 customers to shop at the Morgan Hill store by the end of the day, as the bargains there last through Saturday. About 250 people were lined up outside the front doors before the store opened Friday, Morneau said.
That’s significantly busier than last year’s Black Friday, which started off one of the most sluggish holiday shopping seasons in recent years, when only about 75 people waited for Morgan Hill’s Target to open. The store opened at 6 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving last year.
In the bigger picture, though, city officials still expect a rough road ahead in terms of retail sales. City Manager Ed Tewes said that’s largely because some of Morgan Hill’s largest sales tax generators – Courtesy Chevrolet and Alpine RV – have closed in the last year.
And although the quarter which ends Dec. 31 and includes Black Friday usually brings in the most sales tax for the city, 2008 bucked the trend when the second quarter of the year saw the most sales tax revenue at about $1.67 million.
The first quarter of 2009-2010 already shows a steep decline in local sales activity, as the city collected about $1.14 million in sales tax revenues. The first quarter of last year saw about $1.48 million in sales tax, and the same quarter in 2007 generated about $1.67 million, Tewes said.
“Sales are down all across the economy, the region, and Morgan Hill,” he said.
Target’s busiest area was the electronics section, where customers waited in another line inside the store to get their hands on marked-down Fujifilm digital cameras and RockBand video games.
One of the most popular items was an Apex 40-inch plasma TV for $449. According to customer Lucy Finegan, Target staff tried to ease the shopping experience by lining up boxes containing the 40-inch screens on top of shopping carts just inside the entrance.
The store’s employees also handed out flyers listing the biggest deals and provided store maps to customers waiting in line, according to Finegan, 39 of Morgan Hill, who was third in line when she arrived at 2 a.m. Friday.
Wal-Mart at Cochrane Commons stayed open 24 hours throughout the Thanksgiving holiday, but shoppers there might have had to wait in more than one line, depending on how many bargains they wanted to take advantage of.
Popular advertised items of limited supply that were marked down by half or more (deals known as doorbusters) were covered with sheets of black plastic until the deals took effect at 5 a.m. By about 4:30 a.m., serpentine lines twisted around the store’s aisles as shoppers waited for store employees guarding piles of HP laptop computers (for $298), 50-inch plasma HDTVs (for $598) and other items to reveal the uncommon bargains.
One Wal-Mart customer, who was first in line for a plasma TV, said he had been standing in the same spot – in front of the covered stack of TV boxes, and in between coolers full of cheese and yogurt – since midnight.
Nationwide, up to 134 million people were expected to visit retail stores this weekend, according to the National Retail Federation. That’s up from last year’s Black Friday weekend estimate of 128 million shoppers.
