Generous Instant Rebate TV Savings Helped Feed Black Friday Frenzy

TVs again appeared to be the deal du jour for Black Friday, our canvass of stores in metropolitan New York and in Ann Arbor, Mich., found. CE manufacturers sought to turn around what have been sluggish TV sales by resorting to instant rebate offers that averaged $800-$1,000 in Black Friday savings, compared with $200-$300 in years past, said retailers we polled.

In the case of Samsung, Best Buy promoted its 46-inch UN46C6300 LED-backlit LCD TV at $999, down from $1,699 after $700 in “savings” and packaged it with a Blu-ray player. Best Buy had six of the LCD TV packages per store and sold through them quickly, said Anthony Nicolosi, general manager of the Best Buy store in Danbury, Conn. Best Buy also promoted Samsung’s 55-inch LED-based LCD TV at $1,499 after a $1,000 instant rebate and had a similar-sized Toshiba model that contained a CCFL backlight at $969, down from $1,599.

Target and Wal-Mart countered with 40-inch and 32-inch sets at sharply discounted prices. Target, which fielded a 40-inch Westinghouse 1080p LCD TV at $298, sold through the promotion’s 50-unit allotment within 10 minutes after the Black Friday sale started, a store staffer at the Brookfield, Conn., location said. Target made similarly quick work of a 40-inch Apex LCD TV that carried a $498 price, with store personnel seen scrambling to fill depleted pallets with fresh inventory. Those scenes were repeated at Target stores we visited in other regions early on Black Friday. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart sold through 171 units of an Emerson 32-inch 720p-capable LCD TV with a 60 Hz refresh fate ($198) within an hour of the start of the Black Friday sales, a store supervisor said. It also highlighted a 19-inch Sansui model with similar features at $98.

Across most retailers, 19- 32-, 40- and 42-inch TVs appeared to be the top promotional fodder. RadioShack was carrying AOC, Samsung and Sony 32-inch 720p models at $279, $329 and $379, down $115 in the case of the Samsung set. RadioShack also carried a 19-inch LED-equipped Hitachi LCD TV at $149, down from $199. Hitachi largely abandoned the U.S. TV market in 2009 and it wasn’t clear Friday which branch of the company was continuing to promote TVs.

While relatively new to retail, 3D TVs also were subject to price promotions. Samsung’s 720p-capable 50-inch 3D plasma TV was at Best Buy at $899, down from $1,999 after $200 in savings. A Sony KDL-55NX810 55-inch 3D set with a 240 Hz panel and WiFi also was down with a $1,000 discount at $2,799.

"There seemed to be a planned aggressive strategy from the manufacturers” for Black Friday that focused on instant rebates rather than straight price cuts, said Daniel Schuh, executive director of AV products at ABC Warehouse. Manufacturers “seemed to have a number to hit and to do so they increased the rebates” to help drive sales. ABC opened the doors of its Midwest stores at 8 a.m. Thursday and had sales running 7 percent ahead of last year’s pace through the first two hours of its Black Friday event, Schuh said.

Despite being on the market only a few weeks, Sony’s Google TV-equipped Blu-ray player and 40-inch LCD TV were discounted $100 at $299 and $899. The 32-inch LCD TV remained at $799. Best Buy, the only retailer carrying the product this fall, is highlighting it in an end-cap display in the TV department.

Besides being packaged with TVs, Blu-ray players were heavily promoted as standalone devices. P.C. Richard & Son and other retailers highlighted Toshiba’s SD4300 player at $59 after a $40 savings. As the standard Blu-ray players moved down, WiFi-ready models shifted into their price points. Best Buy’s private label Insignia model dropped to $89 from $149, while Panasonic and Samsung models moved to $99 and $119 from $179. The WiFi-capable players require a separate wireless LAN adapter that sells for $79-$99 depending on the model. With the decrease in Blu-ray player prices, standard DVD models dropped even further, with Target carrying a Memorex upconverting model at $19.99, down from $29.

E-Reader Specials Served Up

With a flood of product available, e-readers also were served up as Black Friday specials. The Best Buy store in Danbury promoted Barnes & Noble’s WiFi-equipped mono Nook at $99, down from $149, and sold its assortment of 50 units within an hour of the store’s opening at 5 a.m. Friday, a store employee said. It also had the LCD-based Sharper Image Literati and Pandigital Novel WiFi-capable e-readers at $119 and $139 after $30 and $40 in savings. Best Buy also sold out of Amazon’s WiFi and WiFi/3G Kindles with 6-inch electronic ink displays and was expecting a new shipment Sunday, the employee said. RadioShack also had picked up the Pandigital Novel ($139) to merchandise alongside the Sony models it already sold.

Apple’s iPod Touch also subject to promotions, a departure for a maker that typically holds the line on price. Wal-Mart had the 8 GB and 32 GB versions of the iPod Touch at the suggested $225 and $295 retail prices, but packaged them with a $50 store gift card. Wal-Mart had sold 110 units of the 8 GB model by 7 a.m. Friday, while consumers had purchased 13 units of the 32 GB version, a store associated said. Best Buy countered with the 8 GB iPod Touch priced at $229 combined with a $30 gift card.

With the decline in sales of desktop PCs, notebook and netbook PCs came more to the fore in Black Friday sales. While P.C. Richard had Asus’ Eee PC netbook with a 10.1-inch LCD, 1.66 GHz Intel Atom processor, 1 GB of memory and 250 GB hard drive at $299, but RadioShack promoted the same model at $190. Its Ridgefield, Conn., location sold though its mix of five models shortly after the doors opened at 5 a.m, a store staffer said. Best Buy had a similar-featured Acer Gateway netbook at $194. In notebooks, Wal-Mart brought back Acer’s eMachines brand for a model with a 15.6-inch LCD and a $198 price. The supply of 20 units sold out in minutes, a store spokesman said.

Best Buy had about 1,500 people lined up three abreast outside its Danbury store at 5 a.m. Friday, the first four having arrived at 2 p.m. the previous day, store officials said. Wal-Mart tried to ease crowding during Black Friday sales by keeping its Danbury, Conn., store open 24 hours. It allowed customers awaiting the Black Friday specials into the store at midnight Friday, five hours before the start of the sale. The line of customers snaked around the perimeter of store with separate cash registers for electronics and general merchandise. The Brookfield, Conn., Target store, which opened at 4 a.m, still had a two-hour wait in some checkout areas at 6:30 a.m. despite also separating electronics and general merchandise purchases. Best Buy had separate cash registers for PC and related purchases and electronics.

"If I closed my eyes I would have thought it was 2009, or 2008 for that matter,” because there were “very similar crowds,” as well as similar products that were most in demand, NPD analyst Stephen Baker told us. Products that were selling most at the Best Buy, Hhgregg, Staples, Target and Wal-Mart stores that he shopped in Northern Virginia early Friday morning were the ones most aggressively promoted in circulars, he said. Those items included notebook computers, inexpensive 32-, 40- and 42-inch LCD TVs, as well as low-priced 42-inch plasma TVs, he said.

Seeing strong demand for LCD TVs and 42-inch plasma TVs also was P.C. Richard & Son President Gregg Richard in the metro New York area, he told us. Also “extremely popular” was a Hewlett-Packard PC with a dual-core processor that he advertised at $376, he said. Traffic was “very steady,” and similar to 2009, he said.

Top-selling products at the Best Buy store in Westbury, N.Y., included computers, e-readers and LCD TVs that the retailer advertised in its Black Friday ad circular, General Manager Peter Conway told us. “Laptops were big,” including the $399.99 Sony model with an Intel Pentium dual-core processor featured on the front page of the circular, he said. Also heavily in demand were a couple of the desktop computers that were spotlighted in the circular, including a Hewlett-Packard PC with an AMD Athlon II dual-core processor that came bundled with an HP LED widescreen monitor and HP DeskJet 3000 wireless printer for $499.97, he said. The desktop bundle offered a savings of $320, according to the circular.

LCD TVs most in demand included a Samsung 32-inch model that came bundled with a Nintendo Wii console for $399.99, Conway said. But 37- and 46-inch LCD TVs were also heavily in demand, Conway said. E-readers were also “hot,” especially the $99.99 Nook Wi-Fi model from Barnes & Noble that was featured on the front page of Best Buy’s circular, Conway said. The model usually sells for $50 more. The PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 were all heavily in demand, but the store had “good quantities” on all three, Conway said. It also had supplies on the new Kinect for Xbox 360 and PlayStation Move motion-control peripherals, he said. Neither was featured in the Black Friday ad, though. They're “doing well,” and he predicted they will be heavily in demand throughout the holiday season.

$59.99 Toshiba Blu-ray Deck a Sellout

While some doorbuster items sold out, including the HP desktop PC bundle and $59.99 Toshiba Blu-ray player featured on the circular’s front page, Conway said, the store still had plenty of bargain-priced DVD and Blu-ray movies and TV show episodes in stock about 8 a.m., when we visited the store. We saw many customers buying Wiis, Xbox 360s and PS3s, especially the 160-GB model of Sony’s console that included two games and the movie Cars on Blu-ray for $299.99. Multiple models of Dynex-branded LCD TVs were also being purchased heavily, along with some Samsung, LG and Sony LCD TVs, with 32-inch models seeming to be the most in-demand. Many customers were also buying DVD and Blu-ray movies and TV show episodes, as well as console games.

About 1,500 customers were waiting in line when the Westbury Best Buy store opened at 5 a.m., and about 10 of them were already in line at 8 p.m. the night before, Conway said. Customers were allowed into the store “a few at a time” to ease crowding inside the store, he said. Tickets for “hot-ticket items” were given out starting at 3 a.m., he said. Traffic to about 8 a.m. was “about the same” as Black Friday last year, he said.

LCD TVs seemed to be the most heavily in-demand CE product at the Westbury Wal-Mart we visited at about 8:30 a.m. Friday. We saw customers purchasing multiple 32-inch Samsung models, as well as 32-, 37- and 42-inch Vizio models, and a 19-inch Emerson model. It was still heavily crowded in the electronics department when we arrived.

Meanwhile, there was a line of nearly 100 customers waiting outside the nearby Sixth Avenue Electronics store in Carle Place, N.Y., just to get in at about 9:30 a.m. There was also a long line waiting to get into the electronics and videogame department at the Toys “R” Us store in Carle Place a few minutes later. Target’s store in Westbury had a separate line to get into the CE area and separate check-out counters for those products. The line in the department was still long at 10 a.m., with Nikon Coolpix digital cameras at $79, a Nintendo Wii Fit Plus bundle at $67 and portable DVD players from Philips and RCA among the items we saw customers buying. The S205 12-megapixel Coolpix, featured on the front page of Target’s Black Friday circular, normally sells for $139.99 there (CED Nov 26 p1). The Wii Fit Plus game bundle, including Balance Board peripheral, usually costs $99.99.

In stark contrast, there were only about five customers in the nearby GameStop store in Carle Place and only about 20 customers in the OfficeMax store next to the Westbury Best Buy at about 8:30 a.m. But strong traffic was reported at most GameStop stores in western Long Island by Chris Levenberg, district manager of the retailer’s stores in that region. Five of the stores in the region opened at midnight Friday, earlier than usual for most of the company’s stores, he said, saying many customers lined up before they opened Thursday night.

Driving traffic into the stores were Kinect and Move, although they weren’t featured in GameStop’s circular, as well as doorbusters that were featured in the circular: three free games when customers bought the Wii and 160-GB PS3 at regular price, one free game between Medal of Honor and Madden NFL 11 from Electronic Arts when buying a 4-GB 360 console at its normal price, and a “buy two get one free” offer on all pre-owned games and accessories, he said. Supplies were “pretty light” on Kinect and Move mid-day Friday, although that varied by store, he said. It was seeing “high demand” on the PS3, Wii and 360, with supplies “pretty limited” Friday, he said.

Target’s Farmingdale, N.Y., store was “sold out” of the Wii Fit Plus bundle when we arrived at about 11 a.m., Store Manager Vincent Scavone told us. “We haven’t seen that item move that quickly in a while,” he said. But “videogames were a big deal” in general at the store Friday morning, with “a lot of questions” being asked by customers on how much savings were being offered by the various bundled products featured in the retailer’s circular, he said. One of the other videogame standouts was a 4-GB Xbox 360 console advertised for its usual $199.99 but with a free $50 gift card thrown in, he said. The Wii console was “doing well,” and recently saw an uptick in demand, he said. But the store had all three home consoles in stock, as well as the Kinect and PlayStation Move accessories, with “similar” demand being seen on both motion-sensing systems, he said. Games for the home consoles were more in demand than those for the DS and PSP handheld systems, he said.

The $449 Apex 46-inch 1080p LCD TV that Target spotlighted on the front page of its circular, the $298 Westinghouse 40-inch 1080p LCD TV featured on the front page, and a $327.99 Samsung 32-inch 720p LCD TV were “all gone in five minutes” at the Farmingdale store, Scavone said. “I wish I had more TVs here to sell,” he told us. A Sony wireless Blu-ray player advertised at $99, offering over $80 in savings, was also among the most popular items, but the store had some left at about 11 a.m., he said. The store had “limited quantities” on $69 Western Digital Elements external hard drives and those were sold out, he said. That’s “always a great seller for us every year,” he said. Also sold out was a $29 Digital Decor 7-inch digital photo frame it had limited quantities on, he said. Also heavily in demand Friday morning were the $1.99 classic movie DVDs, $3.99 DVDs and $7.99 Blu-ray movies that Target featured in its circular, although they were still in stock, he said. Blu-ray demand has picked up in recent months, after “we almost doubled our floor space” allocated to the format early this year, he said.

There were more than 400 customers lined up outside the Farmingdale Target store when it opened at 4 a.m. Friday, Scavone said. The first customers arrived about 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving, he said. Unlike at the Westbury store, there was no line to get into the CE department and no registers set aside just for those purchases in Farmingdale. “We didn’t feel we had a need for that,” he said, telling us the Westbury location is a more heavily trafficked location.

Low Supplies? No Advertising

P.C. Richard and Sixth Avenue Electronics didn’t advertise items on Black Friday that they had low supplies on, we were told. Sixth Avenue stores had “hundreds per store” on even items that it advertised were in limited quantities, said Tom Galanis, Sixth Avenue vice president of operations. Products most in demand included a $67.95 LG Blu-ray player, a $74.95 Magellan portable GPS device, and a 55-inch Toshiba 120-Hz, 1080p LCD TV at $987, he said. Also in “very high demand” was a PSP bundle at $129.99, he said. Supplies were “tight” on the home consoles, as well as the Kinect and PlayStation Move motion-sensing systems, and they were “all doing well,” he said. Traffic was about the same as last year at its stores, he told us.

Many customers lined up outside Toys “R” Us stores “hours before” they opened at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving, company spokesman Bob Friedland told us. The retailer opened its stores at midnight on Black Friday last year, but decided to open two hours earlier this year because customers had “said they wanted a little bit more time to shop,” he told us. “It also helped us alleviate crowds throughout the day,” he said. Items heavily in demand included videogames that it advertised at buy one for regular price and get one for $5, he said.

Those titles included Microsoft’s Fable III and Halo: Reach for the Xbox 360, as well as Activision’s GoldenEye 007 for the Wii, and Madden NFL 11, Medal of Honor, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and The Sims 3 from Electronic Arts, all for the 360. There was also strong demand for the 4-GB and 250-GB Xbox 360 consoles that the retailer advertised at their normal $199.99 and $299.99 prices but included a free $50 gift card. “That was definitely something customers were interested in,” he said. Toys “R” Us also offered an “un-advertised doorbuster” including a black or white Wii at its normal $199.99 price but with a free $50 gift card, and that was heavily in demand, he said.

Shoppers in suburban Rockland County, N.Y., north of Manhattan, were out in force early Black Friday morning hunting mainly for TV and computer deals, our survey found. We counted about 800 shoppers, who stood in the rain for hours hoping to snag doorbuster deals at Target at the Spring Valley Marketplace before the registers opened at 4 a.m. Four customers we spoke to -- including one about 200 places back, who said she had been in line since 2:30 a.m. -- had their sights set on one of 55 $298 40-inch Westinghouse 1080p LCD TVs in stock. She told us she would leave without a purchase if she didn’t land that TV at the price she wanted.

A couple with their son in tow said if they were shut out on the Black Friday deals they sought, they would buy “nothing … or a sandwich maker.” A man in his 30s said he would go up “moderately higher” in price if the $298 deal on the Westinghouse was gone, but only because he was “out here already.” Most agreed, though, that their expectations had been set and they wouldn’t spend more. It would be “weird to spend another $75,” one man said, now that the value of a 40-inch TV had been established, adding that maybe he would “wait until December 26” to buy if things didn’t work out for him Black Friday.

At the Wal-Mart in Suffern, N.Y., where the parking lot was packed at 4:45 a.m., customers were confused about the company’s hours and ticket policy, a few told us. Many said they were exhausted after waiting in line five hours or more to secure doorbuster vouchers for electronics that wouldn’t become available for purchase until 5 a.m. Shoppers could get tickets for laptops, TVs, computers and Xbox bundles at 11:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving, they said, then were told to remain in line until 5 a.m. when they could exchange tickets for items and buy them. “They gave us a 30-minute parole,” said one man, holding a ticket for a $289 HP laptop he said he planned to buying for his wife to use on the job. His 8-year-old son, seeking a ticket for an Xbox 360, wasn’t as lucky. “They told me they'd bring out more” after running out, he said, but none came.

A woman also holding an HP laptop ticket used the 30-minute reprieve from standing in line to pick up a $59 Kodak Easy Share camera, “a gift for myself,” she said. At 5 a.m., when the laptops were exchanged for tickets, we saw three go to one man, from two pallets with about 180 HP boxes each.

By and large, people didn’t come to the Suffern Wal-Mart just to buy a single TV, we observed. We saw a couple push two carts holding four Emerson 42-inch LCD TVs. A couple who said they had been waiting in line since 12:30 a.m. for a $98 Sansui 19-inch LCD TV, were triumphantly waiting to check out with three TVs at 5:10 a.m. They scored two TVs as gifts and one they planned to keep for themselves, they said.

Some customers got in additional shopping while they waited to make their electronics purchases, we found. In the general electronics section of Wal-Mart, one couple stood in line with a cart packed with Corelle dinnerware, children’s clothes and a digital photo frame, in addition to an HP Deskjet printer, an HP PC and monitor and a Vizio 37-inch TV. The couple had arrived in the store “three hours ago, grabbed anything and put it in the cart,” the husband said. For those unsure about what was on sale, wall-mounted store TVs flashed deal prices, including a Monster HDMI cable for $10, a Sony Reader for $99 and a Nintendo DS Lite for $89.

At 4:40 a.m., 20 minutes before electronics went on sale, about 100 Magnavox Blu-ray players at $69 each sat on an endcap near an fixture holding more than two dozen Magnavox DVD players at $37.88 each. At 4:55 a.m., a woman passed us with two of the $69 Blu-ray players in a cart, along with an Easy Vac and Febreze.

The Best Buy at Palisades Center in West Nyack, N.Y., began handing out tickets for select doorbuster items several hours before doors opened at 5 a.m., according to store manager Evilio Lugo, who said the line of people maxed out at 1,400 before opening. The first Black Friday customer, he said, set up camp outside the store at 10:17 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning.

Mum On How Many Tickets Handed Out

Lugo wouldn’t tell us how many tickets the store gave out but said it tried to stick to published minimums and “to offer” a few extra units for people who made the trek out. One young woman was overheard outside the Best Buy store bragging that she had sold a ticket for a 37-inch Samsung TV to another shopper for $30. Lugo told us “he wasn’t surprised” by the account since “some doorbusters are great deals” and consumers who paid for tickets “still see significant savings."

We interviewed Lugo several times between 5:45 and 7:45, while he was out on what he called “crowd patrol.” At the earlier hour, a line of about 175 waited outside, with customers being let inside 10 or so at a time. It was Lugo’s ninth Black Friday for Best Buy, he said, and he assured us “most doorbuster products are gone by 9 a.m.” The store has a high traffic count, he said, because it draws customers from Bergen County, N.J., where local blue laws prevent stores from opening before 7 a.m., and because lines can form inside the mall compared with other nearby standalone stores where customers are forced to wait in the cold or the rain.

Lugo said his store has pulled successful Black Friday policies together from past years to come up with a strategy that works. One tactic was using different watermarks for prices for each store to prevent customers from making photocopies of tickets and selling them -- or giving them to friends or using the tickets in another Best Buy store with a different inventory count. “We all carry the same products,” he said of Best Buy stores in the area, “but we might have 40 of something in stock, while the Yonkers store only has 30."

Lugo expected computers and TVs would ring up the most Black Friday sales at his store, he said. For the past three years, “since the transition to LCD,” Black Friday has been very good for TVs, he said. “I'm surprised how quickly TVs have flown out the door."

When we left Lugo about 8 a.m., the store’s Nooks and Kindles were gone, including the $99 Nook that a saleswoman told us we would have to stand in line for at a register to learn whether if any were left. Lines wound around the store, some with waiting times of 90 minutes or more. We spoke at 6:40 a.m. with a customer who had gotten in the line outside the store at 5:05. He was waiting at checkout to buy a $169 Wii Bundle and a $59 Toshiba Blu-ray player, neither requiring a ticket but both “great deals,” he said.

The RadioShack store across the way from Best Buy at the Palisades Center mall seemed ready and eager to exploit the large store’s popularity and foot traffic for its own benefit. The line into Best Buy wound past the front of RadioShack, where employees handed out their own flyers with Black Friday deals, including a free Samsung Intercept phone with two-year “everything plan” and $99 Garmin personal navigation device. RadioShack also posted unadvertised Black Friday specials outside the store, including a $349 HP laptop with 15.6-inch screen, a $99 Tom Tom navigation device and a $9.99 Bluetooth headset.

According to the RadioShack’s store manager, Frank LaRusso, laptops, netbooks, and cellphones were moving fast out the door, and digital cameras were “selling like nuts.” RadioShack had used a cutting-edge Foursquare social media promotion to reward customers with discounts for visiting stores. But to LaRusso’s surprise, no consumers had yet taken advantage of the program. While we were interviewing LaRusso, an employee asked him if replacement products were available for tripod and screen protectors offered in $19 digital camera accessory bundles. advertised products had sold out by 8 a.m.

Also big this season were gift cards, LaRusso said. Digital camera sales were fueled by free $10 gift cards for purchasers of $50 and higher digital cameras and $20 gift cards for sales of cameras above $100, LaRusso said. Although some RadioShack stores opened at 5:30 a.m., LaRusso took advantage of the Best Buy traffic and opened at 4, “an hour before Best Buy,” he said.

GameStop stores in Rockland County had different Black Friday opening times. The store at the Palisades Center, located between Best Buy and RadioShack, didn’t open until 7 a.m., but a store in the Spring Valley Marketplace took advantage of Target’s pull and opened at midnight, as customers started streaming into the shopping center to get in line for deals. We interviewed salesman Andrew Nelson at the Spring Valley store at 4:15 a.m., who told us GameStop had had about 30 customers since opening at midnight and sold two Xbox systems, one a new bundle combining two games and the second, a used model. He and other employees used the down time to affix stickers to flyers promoting sales items. Stickers announced store hours, he said, and included information not on the flyers. The biggest seller for the early day was Call of Duty: Black Ops, he said.

Word of mouth played extensively into Black Friday activity, we observed. During an 8 a.m. rest stop, we asked a woman sitting with a 32-inch Samsung TV about her Black Friday catch. She had done her homework, noting that the $327 price was the same the model LN32C350D1D sold for at Target. Initially, she and her boyfriend had eyed the 40-inch Westinghouse TV that Target featured at $298, but they had to change plans. “The saleswoman told us it sold out in three minutes,” she said.

Temperatures in Ann Arbor, Mich., fell to a bitter 25 degrees with a wind chill of 11 on Black Friday morning. But at 3:44 a.m., several hundred people already wound around the Best Buy store off Eisenhower Parkway, many wrapped in blankets for protection against the 32-mph wind gusts. At the head of the line were Simran Bajwa, a 21-year old University of Michigan student, Sujit Bajwa, 25, and Parmvir Bajwa, 17, who said they arrived at 1 p.m. Thanksgiving Day to vie for the first of several $197 Toshiba laptops with 15.6-inch screen and 320-GB hard drive when they went on sale early Black Friday morning.

Several Pittsfield Township, Mich., police officers stood watch at the store entrance in case of trouble, but the crowds were orderly and festive. Two customers wrapped in a sleeping bag chanted, “Give me that 42 inch plasma TV” as Best Buy staff walked the line handing out vouchers for doorbuster specials. They included $200 savings on a $699 Sony Vaio laptop bundled with a memory upgrade, a Blu-ray drive and a Blu-ray copy of The Karate Kid. A security official told us Best Buy employees began arriving at the store as early as midnight for the 5 a.m. opening.

Across the I-94 expressway, Target opened at 4 a.m., and by 4:14 a.m. many shoppers were seen carting 40-inch Apex LCD TVs across the parking lot. Inside, the electronics aisle was clogged with consumers, and people stood several deep before the bank of flat-panel TVs. By 4:30 a.m., checkout lines snaked from the front registers to the back wall and turned to reach almost to the side of the store. Several of the hottest doorbusters, including the aforementioned 40-inch Westinghouse LCD TV at $298, sold out by 4:45 a.m. But at that hour, we observed stacks of Samsung 32-inch LCD TVs still available at $327.99 (saving $72) and Wii Fit Bundles at $67 (regularly $99.99).