Black Friday Inventory

This past Friday I joined my mom and my aunt as we made the obligatory Black Friday trip to the mall. The lure of the sale paper prices seemed to be irresistible this year. I usually try to avoid the stores on this day, however this year I was interested in how the economy was actually effecting holiday sales as well as store inventory. Our first stop was Belk. The store not only had less inventory there were also less people out shopping. The hustle and bustle was not quite the same as it had been in the past years. Usually there is so much packed in the store it is almost impossible to get around. The sales looked good in the papers, but they did not pan out quite as we expected. Most shoppers were checking out with only one or two items instead of the arm load that would have been in the past. Our next and final stop was Goody's. The difference there was the level of inventory. It was quite evident that they had ordered much of their Christmas inventory before the economy problems (possibly due to lead times???) or either their inventory managers had completely ignored sale projections for this holiday. They were overflowing with inventory though it seemed demand was not much more there than it had been at Belk. After a lackluster morning of shopping and looking for deals that weren't as great as we thought (it seemed as though they increased the prices before they "slashed" them) we gave up and went home. I think the results we see from who survives this holiday season will be dictated by who best manages their inventory.