Retail

You Can't Start Your Black Friday Shopping Early at These 60 Retailers

Paul Ausick

Published: October 1, 2018 1:31 pm

Last Updated: January 11, 2020 5:04 pm

Retailers have found that, to no one’s particular surprise, employees appreciate having Thanksgiving off. That means that many stores don’t open until Black Friday, traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year, and one when retailers offer discounts to drive early market share.

Retail research firm Best Black Friday has put together an early list of 60 retailers that already have decided to remain closed on Thanksgiving Day. Best Black Friday expects the list to grow to 100.

Why are the stores closing? Management at the retailers has, in many cases, decided to allow employees to spend time with family. Another reason is that some shoppers do not want to venture out during one of America’s most important holidays, one for which almost every non-retail company closes and gives a vacation day.

Then there’s the economics. Thanksgiving Day online shopping more than doubled year over year in 2017 to $2.87 billion from $1.3 billion in 2016, according to Adobe Analytics. Analysts at Shopify see Thanksgiving Day online spending rising to $3.35 billion this year, up nearly 17%. By comparison, Black Friday sales last year totaled $5.03 billion and are forecast to rise more than 15% to $5.8 billion this year.

In several states, stores have to be closed for Thanksgiving because it’s the law. According to Best Black Friday, these include Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Maine.

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Last year, several retailers opened for some hours on Thanksgiving. These included Walmart, Target, Sears, J.C. Penney, Macy’s and Best Buy. Most of these start hours late in the afternoon or early in the evening. Obviously, Amazon.com is open all day.

The data for the list of store closures comes from a recent 2018 survey indicating that only 24.67% of Americans actually favor Thanksgiving openings compared to 47.66% who dislike them. More than a quarter (27.67%) are indifferent. (The 1,069 responses were taken September 30, 2018.)