Wal-Mart Revamps Black Friday Strategy

(AP)

A year after a Wal-Mart worker was by a massive crowd of bargain-hunting shoppers, the retail giant is implementing new crowd control measures to handle the crush that typically accompanies the day after Thanksgiving – Black Friday.

According to a New York Times report Wednesday, Wal-Mart is taking a page from experts who have managed crowds at the Super Bowl and Olympics. The revamped effort stems from the death of Jdimytai Damour, a temporary store worker crushed by throngs of customers in Valley Stream, N.Y.

Among the measures:

• Most Wal-Mart stores will stay open from Thanksgiving night into Black Friday. In the past, the store closed Thanksgiving and opened its doors in the early morning hours Friday, leading to a huge crowd buildup outside its doors. The store hopes the extra hours will ease the crowd flow.

• To avoid the mad dash toward popular items, the store will have customers line up at product displays and treat them on a first come, first serve basis.

• Since Wal-Mart stores only have one entrance, making crowd control more difficult, workers will be stationed at the front of the store directing customers to the appropriate places.

[Bizz1234]

Hello everyone. I work at a Wal-Mart store in Tennessee, and this will be my first year working during black friday. First of all our Wal-Mart has 2 doors NOT 1!Quoted from the article... "Since Wal-Mart stores only have one entrance, making crowd control more difficult, workers will be stationed at the front of the store directing customers to the appropriate places."
Secondly,we are all taking appropriate measures for the black friday holiday. We did have talk about not doing anything for black friday but it would disappoint our customers too much so we found a nice way around it. WalMart stores in our area have even been having little mini sales on certain merchandise ahead of time to lower the crowds a bit!

[lynzlu]

Last year my local Walmart store didn't close at all on Thanksgiving. It stayed open all night long and let people drift in and out all night long. Between midnight and 3:00 a.m. workers rolled out covered pallets of the major sale items into the main aisles of the store. You had to read the pallets/boxes to figure out what was in them (the products weren't necessarily placed in their respective departments), and then stand near "your" pallet until workers cut the covers off of the pallets at 5:00 a.m. It didn't actually even get really crowded at my store until about a quarter til 5 and it was mayhem for about 5 minutes when the covers came off the pallets but overall, other than the place being packed and it being hard to get from one end of the store to another, it really wasn't a bad experience. I even only waited in line for about an hour to pay!

[montana24]

They should offer Black Friday sales for online shoppers too. That would help greatly with crowd control. Their servers may freeze up cause internet delay and/or bring down their site, but that's not too deadly :).

[SusanStoHelit]

Other, responsible stores don't have a problem. They simply go out to the line, a bit before opening, and hand out numbers to the first N people, entitling them to the special deal. No pushing, no crushing, because you don't need to with your number.

[brendett]

Its about time that Wal-Mart is worried about the employees who work for them and shoppers safety.
God Bless Wal-mart.
Now if just stop selling so many products from foreign countries! Put the USA back to work Wal-mart could be a winner !

[hungry1968-17]

The sad part is that Walmart is more concerned with one of it's stores being shut down as a "crime scene", than they are of someone dying.

[Constitionalist]

Why don't we put wall street bankers at the door this year? Then there will be 100% chance of a death, 0% chance of a tragedy.

[eferrell2]

How about they just do away with Black Friday? It's nothing but a publicity stunt to get customers in the store. If one really looked at the "sale" prices, you would see that they are not really sale prices at all. Just another way of advertising the same old prices.
Idiots!

[nikol0304]

Are you dumb? Clearly you're not a Black Friday shopper. The deals ARE better. Of course they are trying to get you in the store....that's why they have doorbusters. Exceptionally good deals on certain items. Now, I won't say a lot of OTHER things aren't overpriced and marked up just about anywhere. But if you're a true BF shopper, you do your homework so you get the doorbusters and DON'T get screwed on the other ****.

[tmsaurman]

"Since Wal-Mart stores only have one entrance, making crowd control more difficult, workers will be stationed at the front of the store directing customers to the appropriate places."

Ummm...All the Walmarts where I live have more than one entrance. Maybe this store needs a remodel.

[nikol0304]

Ummm...the discount stores have 1 entrance. The supercenters have 2.

[MissTaeBo]

Our store is a supercenter and we only have one entrance.

[mikeski0122]

what percentage of goods sold at walmart are made in the USA? I heard < 5%.... how sad. When I hear that we 'crave' chinese products, what else are we to buy?

[hungry1968-17]

But the sad part is that most of those products have "American" brand names, but are made overseas.