Black Friday is invading Greater Victoria with an ever-expanding arsenal of incentives to get shoppers to open their wallets for the holiday season.
Major malls, such as Bay Centre, Mayfair Shopping Centre and Uptown, are opening their doors to shoppers at 7 a.m. Friday. Uptown officials predict lineups will start at 5 a.m.
Carrots to lure customers include thousands of dollars in prizes, gift cards and scratch cards, along with sale prices.
Violence has broken out in past years in the U.S. as crowds battle for the best deals.
Black Friday falls on the Friday after the U.S. Thanksgiving. It is seen as the date that retailers go into the black, meaning they start to be profitable. It is followed by Cyber Monday, on Dec. 2 this year.
Canada has seen Black Friday events expanding in the past five years, largely in response to cross-border shopping. Black Friday’s growth is moving into shopping territory previously claimed by Boxing Day.
The American-born shopping bonanza is increasing its presence as U.S. retailers set up in this country, said Mark Colgate, associate professor at UVic’s Peter B. Gustavson School of Business. “It’s a kick-start to the holiday season.”
Black Friday promotions are about getting customers through a retailer’s door and are bound to grow in Canada, Colgate said.
U.S. retailers in Canada include Target, one of the newest arrivals, which plans to have its stores open 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Black Friday.
In the run-up to Christmas, some retailers are getting a jump on Black Friday. Online shopping giant Amazon is posting daily specials in its Black Friday “deals week.”
Close to half of Canadian consumers, 47 per cent, plan to shop on Black Friday this year, an increase from 41 per cent last year, states a Pollara survey carried out for the 2013 BMO Holiday Spending Outlook. In B.C., 45 per cent of those surveyed said they will shop on Friday.
Shoppers anticipate spending an average of $292 on Black Friday, the report said.
“Canadian retailers are rising to the challenge of the lure of cross-border shopping, as they look to deal with the Canadian dollar still not far from parity, a significant — although narrowing — gap between Canadian and U.S. retail prices and the more generous duty-free limits,” said Doug Porter, chief economist, BMO Capital Markets.
But some retailers in the capital region are not buying into Black Friday.
Shop Local Victoria society has launched a Think Local First Victoria initiative to encourage residents to patronize local businesses. The organization is not carrying out a Black Friday campaign, said Teri Hustins, vice-president of Shop Local and co-owner of Oscar and Libby’s on Fort Street and in Market Square.
Black Friday is more of an event to drive people into malls and big-box retailers, she said. “With most of the Shop Local membership, we are all independent and the lines that we carry are unique to us.”
The Downtown Victoria Business Association is not mounting a Black Friday promotion either, but has other attractions — such as ferris-wheel rides and free horse-drawn carriage rides — to draw people to the city centre, said Ken Kelly, association general manager.
A number of Vancouver business associations are staging Black Friday promotions, but Victoria is more buffered from cross-border shopping than the Lower Mainland. However, “no one is buffered from online shopping,” Kelly said.
