Black Friday Results

Black Friday Results

The early number are in and the crowds were great, but the retail sales are up only slightly up across the US. For Rhode Islanders the number may be better according to the leading retail tracking firm.

Accroding to ShopperTrak total sales rose a slight 0.3% over last year to $10.7 billion, while customer traffic increased 2.2%.  ShopperTrak records sales and customer traffic at more than 70,000 stores and malls.

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Functionally, sales were nearly dead even nationally to 2009. The good news in the region for retailers is that the Northeast out-performed the rest of the country. On a regional basis, sales rose 1.7% in the Northeast, followed by a 0.4% increase in the Midwest and in the West. Sales declined 0.3% in the South.

Some retail analyst have argued that the early November promotions may have taken some of the "pop" out of Black Friday's impact.

The first two weeks of November, sales were up 6.1% and 6.2%, according to ShopperTrak.

“Retailers were very conscious of driving traffic early in November, and in doing so some might have thinned Black Friday spending a bit,” Bill Martin said in a statement.

ShopperTrak initially predicted 3.2 percent sales and 1.0 percent total U.S. foot traffic rise for the 2010 holiday shopping season and the company says this forecast is still in line despite slower than anticipated Black Friday sales levels.