Retailers brace for Black Friday rush

By Mathias Kamin
The holiday season is fast approaching here in the North Country and already the shopping centers are bracing for the annual onslaught of shoppers, coupon clippers and die-hard bargain-finders. The Champlain Centres Mall normally opens at 9:30a.m. most Fridays, but this Friday, Black Friday, it will open at 6am. The JC Penny store in the mall will be opening at 4am.
Early hours have become an annual event at many stores around the country in the past few decades. Shoppers form cues that can be up to a ¼ mile long waiting to gain access to the heavily marked down merchandise.
Most shoppers read about the deals and promotions for stores through the paper, but the Champlain Centre mall has been using a different tactic to educate potential consumers of sales at their stores. Stefanie Pert a marketing intern with the mall and senior at Plattsburgh State explains the program.
“We use the PA here in the mall the week before black Friday to announce to window shoppers which sales are happening at which stores on that day.” This way she says, in conjunction with the normal ads in the paper, shoppers can better locate and purchase the goods they are going to buy.
Joan LaPier, the marketing director of the Champlain centre mall expects the mall here in Plattsburgh to be very full on this black Friday. “We draw from a 90 mile radius, and we have a Target store and no other town in Vermont or the North Country has one, so that’s a big pull.”
The Target store in the Champlain centre mall has only been open for a year and a month and has been quite the popular destination for area and international shoppers.
John Jacques, of Montreal, Québec explains his recent shopping trip into the states. “I won’t be coming down here on black Friday, but I will be back down to the Target to do some more holiday shopping.” Jacques was only down here this past Sunday to shop for the day, but he quipped about his return in the next few weeks as a vacation where he will spend the weekend in town taking advantage of the holiday sales.
Many other Canadians come to Plattsburgh to do their shopping and unlike Jacques a good amount will be here on Black Friday. The currency exchange in the Centre mall is the first stop for most of these Canadians.
“We’ll open about three hours earlier than normal on Black Friday” said Sharron Morse, who works as a teller at the exchange.
Her coworker Hollie Davis said that they “expect to exchange tens of thousands of dollars next Friday, that’s many more times than the average amount for a normal Friday.”
“I think with the Canadian dollar being so strong against the dollar that we will see an increase over last year.”, said Davis.
Students and temporary workers also get a boom because of the holiday season. Jeremy Mathsen, a student at PSUC, just started his job as a toy salesman at the Toys For All kiosk in the mall. “People won’t but this stuff all year, so if they’re going to buy it now, I’ll take the job.”
With all these eager shoppers it is easy to imagine that things can get out of control. Tina Martineau who works at the information Kiosk in the mall recounts an unpleasant episode during a Black Friday excursion her and her mother took a few years back.
“I was inside the store standing in the toy section waiting for the worker to remove a tape barrier when a woman jumped over a shopping cart and landed on my shoulder. All I heard was boom boom bang. I guess she was trying to get a cabbage patch doll, well I got my mother and we left. There’s no security in there, and way too many people, so I don’t shop at the Plattsburgh Wal-Mart anymore. I go to the one in Malone.”
Every year stores have been taking more and more precautions to ensure the safety of their patrons, but not without incident. Last year, Jdimytai Damour, a Wal-Mart security guard in Mineola, NY was trampled to death by a stampede of shoppers during last year’s Black Friday. Authorities say Damour was asphyxiated.