The Wal-Mart store in Secaucus is preparing for Black Friday as if its reputation depends on it.
It does. Last year, the Secaucus store was the biggest seller on Black Friday of all of the 5,700 Wal-Mart stores around the world. (Black Friday is a big deal at only about 2,500 of those stores — in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.) Wal-Mart usually never releases store rankings, but a Wal-Mart spokesman confirmed for The Record that last year Secaucus was the Black Friday winner, followed by another New Jersey store, in Kearny, in the No. 3 spot. The Wal-Mart store in Valley Stream, N.Y., ranked No. 2. The three top stores have a common advantage: They are close to one of the last remaining large U.S. cities with no Wal-Mart stores — New York City. New York City shoppers looking to take advantage of Wal-Mart's Black Friday discounts are likely to head for one of the three stores. Steven Restivo, Wal-Mart's chief spokesman for New Jersey, said the fact that the Secaucus store reached the No. 1 spot ahead of far larger supercenters is impressive. Supercenters contain full-sized supermarkets, as well as a full-sized discount store.
"It happened for a number of reasons," Restivo said. "Certainly Secaucus is in a densely populated area of northern New Jersey. They're also the closest store to midtown Manhattan, and we don't have any stores in the five boroughs of New York City. But we know New York City customers spend more than $120 million a year at Wal-Mart." Wal-Mart has tried in the past to open stores in Queens and Staten Island, but plans for both were dropped in the face of intense union, community and political opposition. Wal-Mart executives eventually announced they plan to stay out of New York City, at least for the near future. The Secaucus Wal-Mart opened in 2004 in the Harmon Meadow shopping complex, which is owned by Hartz Mountain Industries Inc. It is adjacent to a Sam's Club, the warehouse store division of Wal-Mart. Restivo would not comment on how much revenue the Secaucus store took in on Black Friday last year to reach the top spot, but based on statistics the company has released previously, The Record estimates that number at close to $1 million.
Retail analyst Burt Flickinger III, managing director of the New York consulting firm Strategic Resource Group, said it is realistic to expect that the Secaucus Wal-Mart could do between $500,000 and $1 million on Black Friday this year. He believes sales could be lower this year because spending on consumer electronics — usually a big driver of Black Friday results — is expected to be weak. In order to match last year's success, Flickinger said, the Secaucus store "really needs to do exceptionally well in consumer electronics and apparel, two areas that are down this year." Flickinger said it isn't surprising the Secaucus and Kearny stores were top Black Friday performers because North Jersey, unlike other parts of the country, isn't "site saturated" with Wal-Mart stores. "Where Wal-Mart has lower store saturation its stores tend to outperform initially, and then as Wal-Mart site-saturates markets, then the stores go from overperforming, to performing modestly, to underperforming," he said. Wal-Mart has a store under construction within a few miles of the Secaucus and Kearny stores, off Tonnelle Boulevard in North Bergen. That store will be Wal-Mart's first supercenter in North Jersey. At the Secaucus store on Black Friday, nearly all of the 580 employees will be working one of the nine-hour shifts that begin at 4 a.m. that day.
Last year, more than 4,000 shoppers lined up overnight for the 5 a.m. opening. Store employees said they are expecting the same number, or more this year, drawn by door-buster specials including a 50-inch high-definition TV for $788 and a Garmin navigation device for $97. Wal-Mart employees call the Black Friday early-bird sales "the blitz," and Secaucus manager Tracy Ferschweiler had a blitz-planning meeting with 22 supervisors Monday afternoon. "This is going to be a really, really big Black Friday for us," Ferschweiler said, as he outlined the plans to serve coffee and cookies to the waiting shoppers, and to have three portable toilets stationed in the parking lot. One supervisor suggested one or two store employees be assigned to serve as "line savers" for people who need someone to hold their spot while they use the toilets. "That would be a great service," Ferschweiler responded. "Let's do it. Let's offer line savers between 1 and 5 a.m."
At the meeting, Ferschweiler described how the store will handle the high demand for the door-buster deals. When the doors open at 5 a.m., shoppers will be directed to color-coded stations where they will get a ticket for the TV set or other sought-after item. After they present the ticket at the cash register and pay for the item, they then will pick it up at two pickup stations in the store, where the goods will be carefully monitored. The system was put in place, Ferschweiler said, to prevent shoppers from taking the door-buster specials without paying during the 5 a.m. frenzy. "Last year they had to stop letting people in the building because it was so full. Imagine a 162,000-square-foot building at capacity — standing room only. You cannot really monitor what's coming in and out of the building," he said. "This way ensures that everything's paid for, and it really helps the customer who doesn't want to lug these items around."