How a Best Buy manager prepares for Black Friday

Like a quarterback preparing for a big game, Mike Ersfeld will take some time to collect himself this afternoon when he drives up to the Best Buy store he manages.

"I'll take 10 minutes to just relax, take some deep breaths," Ersfeld said.

Thursday is game time for the nation's biggest retailers. Best Buy, Toys 'R' Us and J.C. Penney will swing open their doors at 5 p.m. for one of the biggest shopping events of the year — the sale long known as Black Friday that has more recently encroached on Thanksgiving itself.

They will be followed at 6 p.m. by Target, Wal-Mart, Kohl's, Macy's and many big shopping malls, some of whom will stay open through the night.

And for thousands of store managers like Ersfeld, 34, who has led Best Buy's store in Eden Prairie for three years, it's the most challenging moment of the year.

Before it begins, he will mentally go over the plans he and his team have carefully laid out for the next five days, including everything from handing out color-coded tickets for the hottest items to what to do in the unlikely event a parent can't find her a child. It's a plan he went over in detail with the store's 125 employees during a dress rehearsal on Saturday morning, as his colleagues did at Best Buy stores around the country.

"As a group, we all need to work together to get those lines formed" as soon as the doors open, he told employees. "If those lines don't form in the first 15 minutes, it can create a somewhat chaotic event."

But it is expected to be dethroned this year now that so many stores have gotten a jump start on the sales by opening on Thanksgiving night. Instead, the firm now expects Super Saturday — the last Saturday before Christmas — to take over the top spot.

In an interview earlier this month, Best Buy Chief Executive Hubert Joly noted that Black Friday itself has diminished in importance as the "shopping season gets spread in new and different ways, moving up into the weeks of November." Even so, Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping will be "quite extraordinary," Joly said.

About 140 million shoppers — or six in 10 U.S. adults — are expected to shop online or in stores from Thanksgiving through Sunday, according to a survey conducted for the National Retail Federation. Thanksgiving Day sales are expected to attract about 26 million shoppers alone.

But more shoppers than last year are waiting to see if the deals are worth it before they decide whether to hit the stores or buy items online, the retail federation says.

Retail analysts, research firms and deal sites offer conflicting advice about whether Black Friday weekend is the best time to snag the best deals. Adobe Systems says Thanksgiving Day is the best day to shop online this holiday season, with average prices expected to be the lowest on this day. But the firm ShopAdvisor says the best day for low prices last year was on Dec. 18, when the average discount was 17.5 percent, compared with 5 percent on Black Friday.

"It's a cultural phenomenon," said Mark LoCastro, a spokesman for DealNews. "You'll never stop people from going to the store."

Shortly before 7 a.m. Saturday, three hours before the store would open, about 125 sleepy-eyed employees pulled into the parking lot at the Eden Prairie Best Buy.

"I know it's early," Ersfeld told the group once they had assembled. "But I do appreciate it."

Quickly, the gathering took on the feel of a pep rally. Ersfeld called new employees up to the front, where they introduced themselves and made their favorite animal noise, drawing laughs and applause. He asked the group to shout "In it to win it!" each time he said "Black Friday."

After about an hour, Ersfeld admitted to the employees that he had forgotten his badge, a transgression for which employees are required to do pushups. The entire staff shouted out the count as he pounded through 17 of them.

On Thanksgiving, he said, the first group of employees will begin arriving at the store at 2 p.m. About an hour later, designated staffers from each department will start handing out tickets to customers who are waiting in line outside.

When it's time for doors to open, Ersfeld said he will let in about 15 customers at a time, then wait for them to move inside before letting in the next group. That way, he told the employees, "We don't get a full bum rush."

Then, it was time to practice. Store leaders handed cards to about half of the employees that described scenarios for them to act out as customers, such as looking for a laptop for a son going off to college.

"Three, two, one. Go!" came a voice over the store intercom, as employees slowly started to spread out, some acting like themselves and the rest like customers.

"Come on! Pretend like it's Black Friday," one store leader prodded. "Where is the mayhem?"

Later, Michael Finn, who was hired by the store for the holidays and has been on the job just a month, said he was most concerned about being able to ring people up quickly in the checkout line. But Finn is one of the lucky ones who doesn't have to work the initial crush on Thanksgiving night. He was able to get the night off.

But he will get a piece of the action on Friday morning, when he will report for duty at 7:30 a.m.

The dress rehearsal showed Ersfeld he needed to make some adjustments. Since Saturday, employees made larger signs to help customers figure out where to go and tweaked the route for the main check-out line in case it becomes longer than expected.

When he showed up at work Wednesday, a few people were already lined up outside, despite the snow.

"It's going pretty smoothly," he said. "We're going to be set up for success."