Despite protesters and a threatened proposed walkout at Walmart stores in 100 cities on Black Friday, the retail giant reported its best ever Black Friday events this year as it claimed to have processed nearly 10 million sales during Thurs rush. The retailer claimed it saw larger crowds than last year and had a huge response to its first ever one-hour guarantee on key electronic items.
"I'm so proud of what our more than 1.3 million associates have done to prepare and execute our Black Friday plans, giving our customers a great start to their Christmas shopping season," said Bill Simon, Walmart U.S. president and chief executive officer. "The work of our associates is even more impressive when you consider they served approximately 22 million customers on Thursday.
The world's largest retailer said it sold more than 1.8 million towels, 1.3 million televisions, 1.3 million dolls and 250,000 bicycles on Black Friday.
Meanwhile, hundreds of workers thronged to Wal-Mart stores across the United States demanding higher wages and better healthcare for hourly workers; however, these strikes did not disturb the operations at the stores. Nine protesters were arrested near a Walmart store in California. OUR Walmart, an organization backed by the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, claimed there were 1,000 protests in 46 U.S. states, including strikes in 100 cities, the Reuters reported. However, Walmart said that UFCW are grossly exaggerated.
"Only 26 protests occurred at stores last night and many of them did not include any Walmart associates. In addition, the company did not experience the walk-offs that were promised by the UFCW. We estimate that less than 50 associates participated in the protest nationwide. In fact, this year, roughly the same number of associates missed their scheduled shift as last year," Simon said.
Walmart's Black Friday plan included three events this year at 8 p.m., 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. During the high traffic period from 8 p.m. through midnight, Walmart processed nearly 10 million register transactions and almost 5,000 items per second.
During the 8 p.m. event, customers filled shopping carts with gaming consoles, video games, DVDs, Furbys, fashion dolls, board games and Crock-Pots. At 10 p.m. it was all about electronics, including big-screen TVs, tablets, laptops and digital cameras. Customers were particularly excited about Walmart's "guaranteed" items, and the turnout for the iPad 2, Emerson 32" LCD TV and LG Blu-ray player was amazing. Customers appreciated this historic offering knowing they were guaranteed to put one of these gifts under their trees, the company said in a statement.
