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Updated Monday, November 30, 2009 9:32 am TWN, By Cotten Timberlake and Chris Burritt, Bloomberg

Shoppers purchase electronic items during Black Friday sales at a Best Buy store in Glendale, California, Friday, Nov. 27. (Reuters)

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U.S. Black Friday sales up

'Best Deal'

Samir Patel arrived at noon on Thanksgiving Day with his brother and cousin to claim the No. 1 spot in line at Best Buy in Jersey City, New Jersey. The 26-year-old, who has been unemployed since he graduated with a master's degree in May, was waiting to buy a Sony Vaio laptop for US$399.99 when the store opened at 5:30 a.m. the next day.

“It's the best deal for a laptop this year,” he said. “There's a minimum of 10 in the store.”

Liberty Media Corp.'s QVC shopping channel said it had more than US$32 million in sales Nov. 27, its best-ever Black Friday, and a 60 percent increase from last year. The previous record was US$22.3 million in November 2006, said Doug Rose, vice president of programming and marketing at QVC.

Holiday sales make up a third or more of retailers' annual profit. The International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade group, predicted sales at stores open at least a year will advance 1 percent in November and December after a year-earlier 5.8 percent decline, the worst in 40 years.

'More Traffic'

“There's a little more traffic than last year across the board, maybe 10 percent,” Bill Taubman, chief operating officer of Taubman Centers Inc., a U.S. real estate investment trust with 24 malls, said in a telephone interview Nov. 27.

Walmart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, kept stores open all night so shoppers could grab items when they went on sale at 5 a.m. The world's largest retailer cut some toy prices to US$5.

Toys “R” Us, based in Wayne, New Jersey, had an average of 1,000 people outside its stores before they opened at midnight, five hours earlier than last year, said Chairman and CEO Jerry Storch. The chains sold a “significant number” of Apple Inc. iPods and tens of thousands of Zhu Zhu Pets robot hamsters, he said.

“The last thing parents will cut back on is toys for their kids,” Storch said in a telephone interview Nov. 27.

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