Gerrick Johnson, BMO Capital Markets toy industry analyst, has a keen eye for how the toy industry is doing. Here is his take on Black Friday:
- Based on our observations, we believe Black Friday retail traffic was much improved over 2009 and transaction sizes were larger.
- Store traffic and buying activity appeared sustained, unlike the past three years, lasting much longer than the early-morning Doorbusters.
- We believe retail buying activity showed the best year-over-year improvement at dedicated big-box toy retailers with the weakest improvement coming from mass-market discount retailers.
- We think toy and juvenile products performed relatively better than most other discretionary categories over the Thanksgiving weekend.
- We found that shoppers were buying more items that may not have been on promotion and also seemed more willing to pick up impulse items.
- We believe the strongest toy categories on Black Friday were dolls, educational toys, and games.
- The weakest toy category appeared to by boys' action figures.