Hundreds of shoppers line up in pre-dawn cold, rush stores in search for deals

Black Friday turned out to be a smash hit for large retailers in the Tooele Valley.

Total retail sales across the nation rose 8.3 percent to $10.3 billion on Friday, compared with $9.5 billion on the same day a year ago, according to ShopperTrak RCT Corp., which tracks sales at more than 50,000 retail outlets nationwide. And anecdotal evidence suggests large retailers locally kept pace with the blockbuster weekend nationally.

J.R. Loertscher, manager of Liddiard's Home Furnishings, said statewide television advertising helped Liddiard's draw customers from around the state, driving sales for the weekend higher than they were for the same period last year.  

"We had people come to our store from all over Utah because we had a big advertising campaign on television, and we also did a lot of advertising with direct mail," Loertscher said. "The whole weekend was fantastic, with both days being even better than last year, and we're still tallying up how much money we've made."

Loertscher said people were lining up outside Liddiard's at 6 a.m. on Friday, although the store didn't open until 8 a.m.

"We had about 80 to 100 people lined up at the main doors, with about 20 or more lined up at the four doors around the building," he said. "The rush of people was non-stop and didn't end until we closed at 8 p.m. There were also big lines for customer service and checkout, and our doorbusters all went within 15 minutes."

Home Depot store supervisor Steven Widerburg said his store had around 200 customers waiting in line by the time it opened at 6 a.m.

"I'd say there were about a dozen people there as early as 4 a.m.," he said. "At our peak we probably had 350 to 400 customers in the store at one time, and 30 to 35 staff members, which is twice as many as we normally have in the morning. It wasn't 'Wal-Mart busy,' but it was definitely busier than what we normally do."

Widerburg said his store's sales also exceeded expectations.

"Some of our items were sold out within the first hour," Widerburg said. "Everything else dwindled down over the next three hours, and we sold out of almost everything in our ad within a day or a day-and-a-half. We still have people asking us about our specials."

Although Maceys Food and Drug advertised its "Black Friday Super Sale Blowout," Maceys Manager Jordan Resch said he wants to do more next year to draw an even bigger crowd.

"We didn't have anything run in the newspaper this year, which may have hurt us a little, so next year we'll run something," he said. "We just did advertising in our store with flyers out front, starting a week before Black Friday, and we also didn't have any advertising mailed to homes."

Resch said Maceys did pretty well for its first year of participating in Black Friday.

"Our ipod speakers and digital picture frames sold completely out," he said. "We opened at 6 a.m. and had about 30 people lined up outside our store at 5:30 a.m. the first day."

Loertscher said Liddiard's will stick with its successful Black Friday formula.

"I don't know if we'll change anything for next year because, as the saying goes, 'If it's not broken, don't fix it,'" he said. "I just hope that next year we can get more people to help with sales, because I expect that we'll have an overabundance of customers again. This year we had big store sales in every department and weren't heavy in just one area."

While the big chain stores took in most of the Black Friday haul, several smaller independent shops said their weekend was comprised of below-average sales.

"Because Black Friday is hyped so much with the big department stores, the smaller stores don't get a big amount of business," said Michelle Christensen, owner of Tooele clothing boutique Delicious.

Bob Southwick, owner of Redux music, said he wished more people would stay in Tooele to do their Black Friday shopping.

"I did less business over Black Friday than a normal week at my store, and I'm assuming it's because a lot of people headed to Salt Lake," he said. "I saw a bunch of cars lined up on the road headed out of town, which is kind of a shame because it would be nice to keep them all here locally for Black Friday."

Doug Radunich: dougrad@tooeletranscript.com