By Sapna Maheshwari
Santa Claus is more comfortable around children. Stores are offering Champagne and musical performances. Fitting rooms are open and makeup counters will …
By Sapna Maheshwari Santa Claus is more comfortable around children. Stores are offering Champagne and musical performances. Fitting rooms are open and makeup counters will apply lipstick and blush to customers’ faces. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was massively expanded. With Black Friday as the symbolic start of the holiday shopping period, retailers in the United States are entering a buying season that is much more physically present than 2020, but not quite as carefree as it was prepandemic. People are far more comfortable shopping at stores, but the number who return will likely vary by geography, and the employees will typically be wearing masks. Still, it is a sea change from last year’s long winter, and many shoppers appear excited for an in-person experience. When the NPD Group, a market research firm, surveyed more than 1,000 people about holiday traditions that they missed most in 2020 and hoped to resume, about 36 percent said they missed browsing retail stores. One of the main challenges for retailers will be ensuring that they have items in stock. Nordstrom said this week that it was facing a shortage of inventory at its off-price Nordstrom Rack chain as it grappled with production constraints and a reduction in clearance items. The retailer also said that it experienced inventory shortages more broadly in the third quarter, especially in categories like women’s apparel and shoes as customer demand returned stronger and faster than it anticipated. Nordstrom said, however, that it was in an improved position for the holiday season. Gap said this week that it lost sales in the third quarter as products were limited by factory closings in Vietnam that lasted more than two and a half months and a backlog at U.S. ports. The company’s Old Navy chain was most affected by the delays. The company said it has ramped up its use of airfreight to get holiday products here in time. It is looking into canceling items that arrive too late, or holding them for next year’s holiday season. By Melissa Eddy, Raphael Minder and Gaia Pianigiani Black Friday is an American import that has caught on in much of Europe, embraced by retailers and shoppers as an opening trumpet blast for the start of the holiday shopping season — even if Thanksgiving remains a distant country’s holiday. But Black Friday takes shape in different forms. With toy stores as a focus, here are three snapshots of the state of Black Friday in Europe. Early this week, Clara Pascual was preparing to pin a poster advertising a Black Friday sale onto the front door of her family-owned toy store in central Madrid. Her store was empty of customers — which was no reason to worry, she said, because she expected most of her clientele to show up Friday and Saturday to take advantage of the 10 percent discount on toys purchased during her Black Friday event. “For the past week or so, I think more people have been coming in to check that we were going to have a Black Friday special offer than to actually buy something,” said Ms. Pascual, whose store is called Hola Caracola, or Hello Snail. For toy stores, Black Friday is a shift forward in their retail calendars, because the Spanish tradition is that children get their presents on Jan.6, the feast of Epiphany, which celebrates how a star led the three kings to baby Jesus. “We have already had to adapt to the fact that more Spanish families are gifting at Christmas than for the kings so that their children could enjoy their toys during a longer holiday spell,” Ms.
