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Black Friday Is Now in October, in a Parking Lot or Online
- Retailers need to avoid long lines and crowds in their stores
- Focus will be online, but supply-chain bottlenecks don’t help
Shoppers ride an escalator inside the Roosevelt Field mall in Garden City, New York in 2018.
Photographer: David Williams/BloombergExecutives in the $3.9 trillion retail industry are facing their toughest call yet in an unprecedented year of hard decisions: What should they do inside their physical stores on Black Friday, amid a deadly pandemic that’s still likely to be raging?
Walmart Inc., Target Corp. and other big chains have already said they will close stores on Thursday, Nov. 26, for Thanksgiving Day -- a move long advocated by employees. But whatever happens the following morning needs to feed the frenzy of American consumers hungry for a bargain, even if Black Friday no longer marks the start of the holiday shopping season.