Bargain Hunters Stalk Aisles

If the opening day of the holiday shopping season is any guide, this year could end up being a “Costco Christmas.”

Bargain-hungry Southern Californians swarmed the region’s stores Friday, guided largely by a sense of practicality that had thousands rising before sunrise to snap up the best deals on a wide array of gifts.

Jana Flaig of Westminster does research on products she wants at other stores but makes her purchases at Costco, where she joined thousands of other shoppers early Friday in Fountain Valley.

“When it comes time to buy, I come here to save the money,” said the 53-year-old college instructor. “Getting name brands at a discount price is a duty.”

Flaig’s no-nonsense attitude seemed to be the theme of the day. Shoppers in Southern California and across the country sent clear signals that price matters, even when it comes to holiday gifts.

Indeed, eight of 10 consumers queried in a recent American Express survey said they would do some shopping at mass merchandisers this year. And 86% said their shopping decisions would be driven by what items were on sale.

Those results aren’t surprising given that the uncertain economy is on many shoppers’ minds.

Pam Martin, 52, of West Los Angeles said pocketbook concerns made her more cautious about spending money and more likely to buy gifts at discount stores and other money-saving outlets.

“Who cares about the Macy’s box or the Bloomingdale’s box?” said Martin, an associate director of financial aid at UCLA, who was shopping at the Target store on La Cienega Boulevard. “We all went through that stage. But with everything going on in the world, we’re all more aware of what we’re doing and not being wasteful.”

Having six fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year also prodded folks into stores Friday.

“People who view the Christmas buying season as starting on the day after Thanksgiving are going to get panicked,” fearing that they have too little time to shop, said Richard Giss, an analyst with Deloitte & Touche.

Certainly, there was no shortage of people in stores Friday, although mall traffic nationwide has been weak throughout the year. With more stores opening early for so-called door-busters -- markdowns on items intended to lure early birds -- consumers filled shopping centers earlier this year than last.

And they weren’t there to look, said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., who for the second year in a row visited Westside Pavilion in Los Angeles to observe shoppers on opening day of the season.

“Definitely people were carrying a lot more bags than they did last year,” he said. “People were literally dragging bags full of toys” out of the mall’s KB Toys store.

Glendale Galleria appeared to be having one of the busiest traffic days in the last nine years, said Jackie Fernandez, a retail expert with Deloitte & Touche. “It could be a little panic setting in,” she said, due to the smaller number of shopping days.

Although the day after Thanksgiving is not the busiest shopping day of the year in terms of sales -- that’s the Saturday before Christmas -- it is an important day for retailers, who hope to snag shoppers early and encourage them to revisit the store by Dec. 25.

Last year, the day after Thanksgiving was the sixth-busiest sales-generating day of the season. The weekend accounted for 8.4% of last year’s holiday sales, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.

It was too soon to tell whether the nation’s retailers were on track to outperform last year’s results; sales estimates and other data won’t be available until next week. Experts have predicted that national retail sales will rise 4% this season, which would be the smallest increase in five years.

Across the country, observers said bargains and special discounts were driving shoppers into malls and stores.

Sharply discounted prices Friday attracted so many shoppers to Fry’s Electronics in Fountain Valley that the store reached its maximum capacity of almost 1,500 people an hour after opening, prompting fire officials to ask store managers to control the crowd by making arriving customers wait in line outside, a store spokesman said.

At the Wal-Mart in Panorama City, the line began forming about 11 p.m. Thursday, growing to about 300 people by the time the store opened at 6 a.m.

Kathleen Hamm staked out her place in line at 5 a.m. Friday so she could snag a $698 Hewlett-Packard computer. “I prayed about that one,” said Hamm, a special education assistant in her 30s who lives in Panorama City.

She also picked up some sweats, toys, games and an array of $5 household gadgets, such as an electric knife that she’d “been dying for.”

Overall, Hamm said, she is spending less this year “because of the economy in general.” To make sure she can buy presents for everyone on her long list, Hamm said, she always shops the early-bird specials.

Angel Jacutin, a 22-year-old nursing student at Cal State L.A., didn’t mind jostling other customers in crowded aisles at the Panorama City Wal-Mart to get to the early specials. She was able to purchase seven gifts for $48 before 11 a.m., including a $15 hand-held vacuum.

Jacutin said that the state of the economy and the possibility of war with Iraq is a constant concern, “but when I was inside the store I wasn’t thinking of it. I just wanted to buy something cheap.”

In Southern California, many shoppers have been tuned into problems at the ports, where some Christmas goods still have not been unloaded, Kyser said. Thus, they fear they may not get what they want if they don’t move quickly.

“You still have retailers saying, ‘We have merchandise stranded on the docks,’ ” Kyser said. “Popular toys are going to be in short supply. I think that’s another thing that’s pushing people along.”

If consumers’ shopping fever gets hotter over the next three weeks, analysts wonder whether stores will be able to satisfy demand, since retailers have been vigilant about maintaining lean inventories as the economy slowed.

“Even if you have a big turnout and people are roaring to buy, there’s not enough inventory to have a really big holiday season,” Giss said. “If the economy ends up fooling us and people go out there and start spending, there will be a lot of missed sales for retailers because they won’t have the inventory to fulfill the desire.”

Lakewood resident Gordon Williams, 38, was ready to seize the moment Friday morning. He was lured -- along with hundreds of other shoppers -- to Best Buy in Cerritos, where DVD players were discounted to $69.99 and CDs were $6.99.

He, like many other shoppers, seemed to be driven by a desire to take advantage of the day’s deep discounts, whether they were for Christmas gifts or not.

“We’re here because we’re trying to get more gifts for the dollars, as opposed to waiting a couple of weeks and getting stuff at retail,” said Williams, a Home Depot employee who was pushing a cart loaded with five DVD players, a PlayStation 2 and a portable stereo. “The way things are going and with the stock market, you can’t do what you were doing five years ago.”

Norwalk resident Marilyn Strange also was taking the practical -- and less expensive -- approach to shopping.

The 39-year-old hairstylist and part-time nurse shopped at discount apparel retailer Ross in Cerritos. She was loaded down with evening wear, a denim skirt and workout clothes -- all gifts for family members. She said she wouldn’t be giving gifts to her friends this year.

“I was a Nordstrom shopper all the way. I definitely went for quality,” Strange said. “This year it’s all the discount stores.”

Although some shoppers have shifted to lower-priced stores and others cling to the more expensive options, most consumers have become comfortable shopping at both ends of the spectrum, retail experts say.

“The crossover is phenomenal,” said Michael Baker, an economist with the International Council of Shopping Centers. “We shop everywhere now.... I don’t think we should see this as a stampede of people from one retail channel to another.”

Los Angeles nurse Jennie Del Rosario, 29, started out Friday shopping at the Kmart near 3rd Street and Fairfax in L.A., where she planned to buy discounted microwave ovens for $99 for herself and her mother, along with gifts for acquaintances. Later, she was heading for the nearby Grove shopping center to hit upscale Nordstrom and some specialty shops to buy family gifts.

“You want to give, even if it’s not high-end products,” Del Rosario said. “But when it comes to loved ones, you want to get them something special” and price is less a concern.

Some shoppers were forced to be frugal after a tough economic year that saw job loss and no pay raises.

Nicole Todd-Cantrell, 28, said her husband lost his job a year ago, so they “do what’s practical.” She was shopping with her mother at the 3rd Street Kmart, where she bought food in bulk, a Fisher-Price Spiral Speedway for her son and one unplanned item for her family, a George Foreman grill.

Jeanette Johnson of West Los Angeles went to Target for just a few items Friday, including two popular Bratz dolls, which she added only because the dolls have the same names as her daughters, Jasmine and Jade. Other than that, Johnson, who has been on disability, said she was trying to do her shopping on the cheap and to be practical.

Mindful of her own precarious financial situation, she plans to handle much of her shopping list this year with gift certificates from area grocery stores.

“Now I’m into getting something that’s going to benefit people rather than just getting something cute,” Johnson said. “My finances changed and so have a lot of other people’s.”

That means forgoing the usual trips to the more expensive mall stores, she said.

“People used to be much more interested in department stores and other fancier stores,” Johnson said. “Now, you just put a bow on it and that’s it. It doesn’t matter where the bow is from, either.”

*

Times staff writers Jia-Rui Chong, Abigail Goldman, Claire Luna, Hilda Munoz and Stephanie Stassel contributed to this report.