Early Black Friday Deals: Where to Find Savings
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Here's your Money Briefing for Wednesday, November 16th. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. Black Friday, the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season, is still more than a week away. And while retailers have traditionally waited until then to roll out deep discounts to lower in holiday shoppers, this year is different. Retailers have gotten a head start and have already started dropping prices.
A lot of shoppers, especially when their budgets are a bit stretched, they're waiting until the last minute to shop and that's making some retailers nervous and nervous enough to start offering deep discounts.
So where can you expect to find the best deals? And how long are the discounts likely to last? Our reporter Suzanne Kappner has been checking in with retailers nationwide, and she'll be here to talk about what she found.
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What early evidence shows retailers have started Black Friday deals ahead of schedule?
For the break.
Americans' wallets have been stretched and stretched this year as inflation has hit four-decade highs. But here's some good news. Retailers have gotten a head start in rolling out Black Friday deals more than a week in advance. So where can shoppers expect to find the best deals? To find out, I'm joined now by Wall Street Journal reporter Suzanne Kappner. Suzanne, thank you very much for being here.
Thanks for having me.
So Suzanne, it's been a few years since retailers promoted these pre-Black Friday deep discounts. Why are they coming back this year?
Two words, excess inventory. Retailers, especially apparel retailers, are sitting on way too much stuff. That's the result of those bottlenecks in the supply chain finally loosening up just as consumers started to pull back on their shopping. And that left big chains like Target and Gap with simply just too much stuff that they need to discount to clear out.
Now, you mentioned apparel stores. Why is that group in particular dropping prices so much?
Well, we all sort of have more than enough clothes in our closets. These are not necessities like food and gas and other things that we're spending money on. So it's one area where consumers can cut back. And there is just too much clothing sitting out there on store shelves. And in fact, apparel, while other categories like food and even consumer electronics and toys, all are still experiencing inflation, apparel is the one category where prices have actually started to fall compared with a year ago.
And what other types of stores are putting things on sale?
Well, apparel is certainly the biggest one. And you're seeing stores like Gap offering 60% off. This is ahead of Black Friday. That's very unusual. And we haven't seen these types of discounts, like you said, in two years. But other categories are starting to discount more, like toys. There is some nervousness in the toy industry because a lot of these toy manufacturers, to make sure they had the goods in time for the holiday season, they brought stuff in early. And they've been sitting in warehouses. And consumers are just waiting a little bit longer to buy this year.
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