The sky will still be dark when a bunch of stores open their doors on Black Friday in Hawaii for the traditional start of the holiday shopping season.
Some retailers with the earliest opening hours Friday include multiple locations of SoHa Living and all Waikele Premium Outlets stores at 5 a.m. Retailers opening at 6 a.m. include Best Buy, Target, Walmart and all the stores at the West Oahu regional mall Ka Makana Ali‘i.
Tina Yamaki, president and CEO of the Retail Merchants of Hawaii trade association, said operating hours for what can be the biggest holiday shopping day of the year appear similar to last year and are not returning to as much of an extreme event that existed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, in part because it’s still hard to find enough employees to staff extra hours.
“People’s shopping habits have changed,” she said, explaining that since the pandemic retailers have tended to open a little later and close a little earlier.
Still, Yamaki expects more consumers will be out shopping on Black Friday this year partially due to the hit they have taken to their pocketbooks from three years of relatively high inflation.
“Everyone is looking for the deal,” she said.
Another reason Yamaki expects more Black Friday shoppers is because there are five fewer days this year between the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“You have that one week less to go shopping,” she said.
Hawaii’s largest mall, Ala Moana Center, is generally opening at 8 a.m. Friday, or two hours earlier than a typical weekday. Some stores there are scheduled to open earlier, including SoHa at 5 a.m. and Hawaiian Island Creations at 7 a.m.
The Black Friday opening for Pearlridge Center will be 9 a.m., though some stores are opening earlier. As part of an effort to attract shoppers early, various retailers at Pearlridge are putting merchandise on sale at certain times, and at least a couple are offering free items to an initial group of customers through the doors.
For instance, the first 100 customers at Macy’s are to receive $10 gift cards, and the first 100 customers at Jeans Warehouse are to receive $20 gift cards.
Best Buy, which has two stores on Oahu, has tried luring shoppers even before the day after Thanksgiving with deeply discounted so-called doorbuster prices on different kinds of merchandise in what the chain is calling “Black Friday” sales every Friday since Nov. 8.
The retail industry adopted the term Black Friday because it is one of the busiest shopping days of the year, and can shift the finances of a business from a deficit once indicated in red ink to a profit that is sometimes referred to as being “in the black.”
Retail technology firm Sensormatic Solutions predicts that Black Friday will be the busiest shopping day this year in the United States, followed by the Saturday before Christmas and then the Monday before Christmas, which is on Wednesday, Dec. 25.
“The period from Black Friday through the New Year is critical for retailers, Tony D’Onofrio, Sensormatic Solutions president, said in a Sept. 17 news release about shopping day predictions.
Waikele Premium Outlets claims to be Oahu’s earliest-opening shopping center with all retailers opening at 5 a.m. Yamaki said she saw traffic on the H-1 Freeway backed up for a mile in both directions from the Waikele off-ramps on Black Friday last year at about 6 a.m. with shoppers trying to get to the mall.
For shoppers who want to get an extra-early start after a Thanksgiving meal, at least a few retailers are scheduled to be open on Thanksgiving for gift-buyers, including Jeans Warehouse and The Compleat Kitchen at Kahala Mall and Banana Republic at International Market Place in Waikiki.
