Thanksgiving sales temper Black Friday frenzy

Malls and stores around Spokane were humming with shoppers on Black Friday, but many said the traditional frenzy to score the best deals in the early morning seems to be dying out.

With most large retailers opening on Thanksgiving and many holding sales all week long, getting a good deal doesn’t have to mean waking up hours before dawn.

The J.C. Penney at the Spokane Valley Mall opened at 3 p.m. on Thanksgiving to a line of about 150 people, General Manager Brandon Meyers said. It closed at 9 p.m. and reopened at 6 a.m. Friday with new sales. Home items like Keurig brewing machines and coffee pots were selling well.

Employees were paid double time for the Thanksgiving shift, Meyers said, and many were asking to work the holiday.

“We were pretty excited,” he said of the Thanksgiving sale.

Nationally, Black Friday sales have declined slightly every year since 2012, the New York Times reported, in spite of increases in overall retail spending.

At the NorthTown mall, John Shasky, the mall’s manager, said Thanksgiving sales are evolving. The shifting sales started four or five years ago, but opening times have moved earlier since then, he said. This year, the mall was open from 6 p.m. to midnight on Thanksgiving and reopened at 6 a.m. on Black Friday.

“It’s spread out our traffic,” he said.

Riann Ellingwood said she heads out every year with family and gets the bulk of her Christmas shopping done on Black Friday. This year’s crowds were smaller than last year’s, she said.

“I don’t think I’ve stood in a line,” she said.

The group started at Fred Meyer, which offers doughnuts and coffee, at 5:30 a.m. to get socks, games and other small items. They moved on to NorthTown and planned to finish the day at Walgreens to take advantage of its wrapping paper sale. Ellingwood said that after the shopping was over, she would go home and nap.

Small businesses downtown see some rise in sales on the nation’s biggest shopping day, but that traffic often comes in the afternoon when people leave malls and big-box retailers.

“Small Business Saturday is bigger for us than Black Friday,” said Kyle Kemble, the manager of Uncle’s Games in downtown Spokane. The day was started in 2010 by American Express and encourages people to patronize locally owned, brick-and-mortar stores.

Not everyone was in on the shopping frenzy. Members of the Unchained Brotherhood, a motorcycle club for recovering addicts with chapters across Washington, stood out in the cold along North Market Street near the Renegade Classics motorcycle parts store, collecting donations and toys for kids.

Last year, the club raised $8,000, which it donated to groups like the Excelsior Youth Center to buy presents for the kids they work with, club members said.