By Ben Roberts - bio | email
ALBANY, GA (WALB) – The National Retail Federation estimates Black Friday weekend sales reached $45 billion nationwide. 212 million people visited stores or websites, up nearly 9%, and they spent an average of $365-dollars. That's up 6.4% over last Thanksgiving weekend.
Those numbers come as no surprise to Theresa Hall, a manager at Kirkland's gift store in the Albany Mall. "We've done extremely good in sales.," Hall said so far, this Christmas season is shaping up to be a lot better than last year. "It's trending up from last year. You know last year was kind of a difficult year for everybody."
Elizabeth Hayes is helping boost those sales. In fact, she didn't wait for the holidays to start her Christmas shopping. "No, I've kind of been doing shopping year-round for Christmas," she said.
Wednesday night she was looking for secret Santa gifts for a co-worker. She expects to spend more than she did last Christmas, but her friend Jennifer Griffin plans to cut back a little bit. "We'll probably spend a little more, but it'll be more on the kids that the adults," said Hayes. Griffin said, "We'll spend less."
One thing they agree on: they're both looking for good sales. "Look for the things that have good prices," said Hayes. "Definitely, look for the good prices," added Griffin.
The folks at Kirkland's say Hayes and Griffin shouldn't have any trouble finding those good prices as retailers try to keep the good start to the Christmas season going. Theresa Hall said, "Everybody's doing different things to see that it continues to grow, and I think we'll be doing really good this year."
Kirkland's is offering several deals to entice shoppers. They include $10 off if you sign up for their e-mail list. You can also sign up for a chance to win a $2500 shopping spree at the store.
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