I think that if you had a poll of the entire board, the Staples BF Sale would have been voted either #2 or #3 most anticipated. It appeared that Staples wanted to be taken alot more seriously for today and future Black Fridays.
They had alot of great door busters. 2 excellent GPS units, a very good laptop deal, a couple of cameras, etc.
Now I am only a sample of one customer's experience at one store, so it is not clear if our scene was repeated around the country, but Staples has alot to learn about how to run a Black Friday sale.
We joined the N. Miami Beach line after 3:30AM. We were roughly 25th on line, although due to friends and family of the other 24, we likely ended up around 40-45.
The store lighhts came on around 5AM, and you could see workers making preperations. The store was due to open at 6AM, but no one came out to explain their procedures till 5:55. They did eventually give out tickets for 4 items, the laptop, the Tom Tom, the Navigon, and the Bluetooth headset. We missed out on a laptop by at least 15 people, but were able to get a GPS and the Bluetooth. They just handed out the tickets but did not say where to go or what to do. They then did not actually open till 6:08.
Once inside, they made an announcement that the ticket items could only be purchased at the copy center where they had two registers. However, there were also additional items that you could only get at the copy center, such as the HP camera. Since it was my wife and I, we were able to split up, me on the copy center line, she getting the rest of our purchases.
She also wanted the Sony camera as well as an MP3 player. She was told by an employee that they were both at the copy center.
The copy center registers were averaging 5 minutes per customer. Once you actually got rung up, people were asking for other products and a manager was hustling around the store to get those items. When I asked if I could get my two items and pay for them at the main registers I was told that was impossible.
After about an hour, it was finally my turn. It turned out that they never had any Sony cameras in stock, and the MP3 players had been in another part of the store and were now sold out. When I finally paid, I turned around and saw at least 60 people on line for one of the two copy center registers.
Well Saples, you are now a BF player. You did an excellent job presenting a diversified inventory for very good to excellent prices. Now you need to work on your customer service and organization skills. If you can put together both an excellent ad while also getting people in and out in a decent manner, you may have lines as long as Best Buy by BF 09.
