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American Morning

Stores Hoping to Lure Customers Before Christmas

Aired November 23, 2001 - 07:13   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: All right, it's on now. Just 33 shopping days till Christmas. But with worries about terrorism and a slumping economy these days, there are fears that many people won't get out there and shop. So retailers are trying to change things. They're hoping to lure holiday shoppers with lower prices and longer hours to boot.

But can this holiday shopping season save the economy? We've got correspondents already out there in the stores.

We check in now with our Deborah Marchini, who is, believe it or not, at Macy's flagship store in New York -- Deborah, how in the world did you draw this terrible assignment?

DEBORAH MARCHINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I love this assignment.

HARRIS: I know you do.

MARCHINI: We came here seven o'clock this morning. We saw some crowds outside of Macy's on 34th Street and Broadway, bills itself as the world's largest department store. But the crowds were not tremendous. There were people waiting to get in early, seven o'clock, when the store opened up.

Now, they call this black Friday, Leon. It is, that's a good thing, by the way, in retail parlance. I mean if you're in the black, it means that you're making money instead of losing money. This is easily one of the busiest, if not the busiest shopping days of the year.

Federated Department Stores, which owns Macy's behind me and also the more upscale Bloomingdale's, is estimating that sales for stores open at least a year could be down seven to 10 percent this year, partly as a result of the events of September 11, of course, partly because the economy was slowing even before that.

After September 11, though, Federated canceled some orders. Inventories on the shelves likely to be a little slimmer this year in year's past as investors in, as retailers try very hard not to get stuck with heavy inventories.

We can tell you that the best sales so far this year have been at the discounters, the Targets, the Wal-Marts, the Kohls, and that has put pressure on full price retailers like Macy's to discount heavily. We are seeing heavy sales, a bunch of circulars from Macy's. The additional concern, of course, is security, concerns that have depressed traffic at malls around the country since September 11 and it is not clear what impact that's going to have on holiday shopping this year.

We haven't seen an unusual presence of police here at Macy's yet this morning. We can tell you, though, that that is something that the stores are trying to take care of and make a very visible effort to provide to their shoppers.

We're going to go now live to Ed Lavandera. He may be able to tell us a little bit more about that. He's at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, the largest shopping emporium anywhere.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Leon, the sights and sounds of a toy store getting ready for the holiday season is in full swing here at Kaybee's. We're at the Kaybee's toy store in the Mall of the America in Bloomington, Minnesota, one of the nation's largest retail shopping centers and we do mean extremely large.

And here at Kaybee's, this was the first store to open this morning. And just to give you an idea of how serious these folks are about getting people shopping and getting people in the right frame of mind for shopping, no shopping carts here, but large trash bags to stick all of the toys in as you go around shopping throughout the day. And, of course, I mentioned this was the first store to open this morning.

And here to kind of guide those people through all of this is Etta Twernbold. She's the manager here. Etta, what are you doing to entice people to get -- this is, of course, a very important shopping day for you guys. What are doing to people to entice them to spend money here today?

ETTA TWERNBOLD, STORE MANAGER: Help them out as much as we can. And then we run our early bird special ads in the newspaper and the ad is broke released, I believe it was yesterday that it came out, so that everybody has a chance to take a look at it. And those early bird specials run from 5:00 a.m. to noon in all of our stores.

LAVANDERA: And these are, the idea being that you offer some great deals on a lot of products and you get just people into the store, right?

TWERNBOLD: Oh, absolutely. That's why we open so early in the morning. We want to be one of the first ones to be able to open and that way we get the hard core people that want to be able to make it in and make sure that they get all the special deals that are offered in our early bird ad.

LAVANDERA: How important is this shopping day for your store and the company in general?

TWERNBOLD: It's one of the biggest days that we have in the entire company. This is, we've worked all summer long and through August and October and November and such so we get ready just for this day. This is one of the biggest days of the season. So we run, we run a very long day and that way we're better prepared.

LAVANDERA: What's it like to be a manager in a store? You had a couple dozen people already shown up here at five o'clock in the morning. I can imagine it only gets more hectic throughout the day.

TWERNBOLD: It's chaos but it's a lot of fun. We really, we've got a great staff and that's the key thing to be able to manage your business throughout the day is to make sure that you have a great staff, and we have one so.

LAVANDERA: All right, since we're here at a toy store, let's have a little fun. Give us an idea of what the toys most people are going to be looking for this holiday season and what's hot out there?

TWERNBOLD: Right now what we've noticed is anything that's robotical, such as the Lego Bionicals or our Rumble Robots. These are just two items of the several of the robotical type items that are available on the market right now. There's probably about 15 or so that run. And they've been one of the key items.

LAVANDERA: All right, and you've got a busy day ahead so I really appreciate your talking with us here. And there are about more than, well over 100,000 people expected to file through the Mall of the America today and obviously the stores about two hours away from opening, most of the stores. But Kaybee's already opening and we're told that this is going to become a very hectic place throughout the day.

We'll be here throughout the day jumping, hop scotching between different stores so be sure to tune into CNN throughout the day to kind of keep up with our shopping pleasures throughout the day -- Leon, back to you.

HARRIS: All right, Ed. You might need a helmet and some shin guards before this morning is over in that store.

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