With an estimated 140 million Americans predicted to shop this weekend, retailers are bolstering security, deploying Segway patrols and putting on live music to distract shoppers and avoid the deal-hunting scrums that can foster Black Friday tramplings.
Malls are beefing up patrols with off-duty cops. Chains including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) are using quota systems for popular doorbusters from iPads to jewelry. Yet all was not peaceful. In one incident, uploaded to YouTube, uniformed security officers handcuffed a female shopper at an unidentified Wal-Mart store after a tussle over a television. Bill Simon, chief executive officer of Wal-Mart’s U.S. division, was asked about the incident on a conference call today with reporters.
“Any time you get more than 22 million people together you’re going to have some behavior you’re not proud of,” said Simon, who also said “the number of incidents” was down from last year and that it’s “hard to tell what happened in any individual incident.”
The National Retail Federation issued crowd management guidelines, urging stores to prepare for flash mobs, long lines of angry customers and crowded washrooms. The Washington-based trade group has sent out the memo annually since a Wal-Mart worker was trampled to death in 2008 during a Black Friday melee.
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Sales from Black Friday through Cyber Monday will increase 2.2 percent to $40.5 billion, IBISWorld Inc. predicted. General merchandisers such as Wal-Mart, Target Corp. and Sears Holdings Corp. (SHLD) typically attract the biggest crowds. That’s because shoppers want to get everything at one place on a day when traffic and parking are challenging, said Rich Mellor, the NRF’s vice president of loss prevention.
‘Rambunctious Shoppers’
Shoppers are “anxious to be first,” he said. “They get really rambunctious coming in the door. You have to be informative so they’re not going crazy looking for whatever.”
Yesterday at a Wal-Mart in Garfield, New Jersey, police arrested a woman for spitting at another woman and hitting her child instead, Captain Darren Sucorowski said in a statement. A man screaming vulgarities in the same store also was arrested, Sucorowski said.
At a Wal-Mart store in Elkin, North Carolina, Brian Spain, an actor and filmmaker who lives in the Bronx, captured another fracas over a TV on his phone. Before the fight broke out, Spain, 33, was marveling at how peaceful everyone was.
“I told myself ‘it’s so calm,’” said Spain, who was visiting his family. “Everyone’s polite. It’s not the way it is in New York.”
Date: Nov 30, 2013