I also took note of the lack of overflowing parking lots, and more particularly, the lack of traffic jams.
Our office is near the commercial area of town; and, I remember Christmas seasons where I couldn’t even drive to a fast food place to get lunch...total traffic snarl.
Non of that this year. I understand that online sales are taking some of the sales away (and that’s not a good thing for local small business anyway); but, the volume was clearly down.
I had to pick something up at Wal Mart on Black Friday, in the P.M....wasn’t crowded in the least bit. Then I turned on the radio and heard about the great day retailers were having. A very Soviet experience.
I had to pick something up at Wal Mart on Black Friday, in the P.M....wasn’t crowded in the least bit. Then I turned on the radio and heard about the great day retailers were having. A very Soviet experience.
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Same here ,, black friday ,, bopped into WMT for a grocery item ... the lot was a bit more than half full ,, like a normal Saturday, no delay at checkout and only half of the checkouts were open.. only buying a very few toy items ,, 90% just needs.. never saw what I would call a large crowd.. one mall I visit has had over a 20% vacancy rate for at least the past 2 seasons,, they hid it by moving existing stores in seldom visited side corridors to the main “avenue” and vacating the side corridors,, now the main “avenue” has even more empty positions , camoflaged by window displays for the surviving stores and some of the new stores are really low rent things that normally would never be in a mall... a health club took at least 6-8 of the empty spaces ... just the fact they could consolidate enough space for it tells you a lot,, then you have the personal services type places that are started on a shoestring..