Black Friday requires planning, coordination

MOSES LAKE — People who study these things for a living, and write about them for major publications, are saying Black Friday doesn’t have the power it once did. Online shopping, longer hours, sales that extend for a week or longer – those things make Black Friday smaller than it used to be.

But the joint was still jumping Thursday night and Friday, at least the joint in Moses Lake. A Walmart patron loading the swag into his car at about 6:15 p.m. Thursday explained how it worked.

The store was open during Thanksgiving afternoon and shoppers could pick up the special Black Friday merchandise, he said, and he and his wife arrived about 4 p.m. to scope out their selections. But they couldn’t check out with that merchandise until 6 p.m. Some purchases required a wristband.

The back end of the family car was full, but holiday shopping was far from done. “We’ve got four kids. Just getting this party started,” he said.

The Walmart parking lot was full and the adjoining parking lot on Stratford Road started to fill up as Ross also opened its doors. The aisles weren’t quite as full as they have been on other Thanksgiving nights, but there were still lines for some items, especially back at the electronics section.

At Home Depot the doors opened at 6 a.m. Friday, when customers were greeted with coffee and cookies. Manager Jim Cook doesn’t think Black Friday is passé, at least not at Home Depot. “It’s a big event for us, especially at this time of year,” he said.

Tri-State Outfitters also had coffee and cookies for Black Friday shoppers. Tri-State’s parking lot was so full at about 9 a.m. Friday that customers had to use the Garden Heights Elementary lot across the street.

Black Friday focuses on deals, and pallets and bins of deals were all over Walmart and Home Depot. “They (Thanksgiving weekend sales) are planned a year in advance,” Cook said. Companies do research, looking at year-over-year sales trends; stores have some of their own brands and expand on those product lines.

But all of that merchandise has to be put out for sale, and for most companies the business stays open during the operation. “It’s all mapped out” back at Home Depot’s head offices. “All we do is follow a map,” he said.

“We roll it out Wednesday afternoon,” he explained, while the store is still open for business. Home Depot closes at 9 p.m., and the goal was to have everything out and ready to go by the time the store closed Wednesday night. “This year we were done at 9:15 Wednesday night. What we call ‘grand opening ready.’” It requires significant coordination, he said, but once the plan is in place the actual work goes smoothly.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.