Black Friday shoppers find what they’re looking for, minus the ‘Hatchimals’
Amber Froats of Claysville makes her way through the Washington Toys“R”Us store on Black Friday. She and her mother were shopping for 10 children.
Natalie Harris, left, and her daughter, Diane Roe, both of Waynesburg, load packages into their vehicle after shopping at Toys“R”Us in South Strabane Township on Black Friday.
Pushing a loaded shopping cart through the aisles of Toys “R”Us at Washington Mall, Amber Froats of Claysville and her mother, Denise Wojnarowski of Cameron, W.Va., paused while they waited for a salesperson to locate two additional Digiart Creative Easel toys to add to their purchases.
The two women began shopping at 6:30 a.m. Friday for a total of 10 children, six of whom are of kindergarten age or younger, so toys were at the top of their holiday shopping lists.
They were among the 137.4 million Americans the National Retail Federation has estimated will shop at some point during the Thanksgiving weekend, with Black Friday being the busiest of the four days.
“It’s fun,” Froats said, adding that she always starts her shopping for the holidays on Friday after Thanksgiving.
“I don’t think that the stores should be open on Thanksgiving,” she said.
But like true Black Friday shoppers, Froats and her mother had a strategy: After buying the toys they needed early – before the store became too busy – they planned to move on to Target, then Kohl’s, with a finish at Tanger Outlets later in the day.
While her cart was filling up fast at Toys”R”Us, one gift Froats didn’t see Friday was the season’s hottest item, Hatchimals egg toys.
Their absence wasn’t a surprise to her.
Froats said she began shopping for Hatchimals online a month ago, but always encountered sellouts.
She said she eventually contacted an aunt in Texas, who located two of the toys there.
Store manager Tracy Sharpley said Hatchimals just aren’t staying on the shelves.
When asked when she might see another order come in, she could only shrug.
“We keep selling out of them,” she said.
Out in the parking lot, Natalie Harris and her daughter, Dana Roe, both of Waynesburg, were loading their vehicle from a full cart of just-purchased toys.
Harris said they had visited Tanger Outlets on Thursday evening, adding that the shopping wasn’t as crowded as in earlier years.
She acknowledged that a televised 8 p.m. Pittsburgh Steelers game may have kept some people from jumping into the “Moonlight Madness” sale until later in the night.
“It wasn’t bad,” she said.
But at Toys”R”Us, which also opened at 5 p.m. Thursday to a crowd of 220 people, Sharpley said her staff of 90 took turns spelling each other, with some working from 5 to 10 p.m., then returning in the morning to relieve those who worked overnight.
In addition to helping customers shopping in the store, the staff also processed 700 online orders, preparing them for shipment to customers living in the tri-state area.
“Last night was fun, but this afternoon will get a little crazy,” said Sharpley, 40, who knows the tempo of the annual holiday shopping blitz well. She began working part-time for the chain in 1998 on a seasonal night crew.
The Thanksgiving weekend is something that the store begins planning for in mid-summer, Sharpley said, then starts hiring extra seasonal help in September, with the number of employees swelling from 30 to nearly 100.
“It’s a process,” she said.