Black Friday was Flat Friday

Early reports on Black Friday retailing showed at 45,000 mall-based merchants, sales for the day after Thanksgiving fell 0.9 percent from last year.

Statistics from ShopperTrak, which measures the performances of mall-based merchants, suggests that consumers mobbed discount chains over the weekend but tended to avoid other specialty retailers at the mall. Analysts suggest the disparity could indicate a tough season ahead for clothing retailers like Gap and Aéropostale and even deeper discounts for shoppers as the chains scramble to build momentum in the crucial approach to Christmas.

“The specialty guys just got outgunned this time around,” a retail analyst, John Morris of Harris Nesbitt, told The New York Times. The winners, he said, were the discount chains with locations outside the malls, apparently the beneficiaries of an 11.4 percent increase in weekend spending among Visa USA cardholders.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (Bentonville, Ark.) reported that a record 10 million shoppers walked through its doors before noon Friday, “exceeding plans.”

Despite a slower-than-expected start at the mall, the National Retail Federation stood by its forecast for the holiday season. It still expects sales to rise 6 percent over 2004. In a survey of more than 4000 consumers over the weekend, the NRF found that 61 percent made purchases at discount retailers, 47 percent at department stores and 41 percent at specialty stores.