An early start for 'Black Friday'

Planning to get an early start on holiday shopping? Then you'll be glad to know that the Galleria is opening early Friday — 5 a.m., to be exact. It's not that the mall hasn't opened early on "Black Friday" before — it used to open at 7, so this isn't all that big a change — but still, you have to be pretty dedicated to get out of bed in the middle of the night just so you can be the first person to set foot in Jimmy Choo.

The early start gives shoppers a chance to take more advantage of holiday sales, said Scott Mumphrey, president of Simon Property Group, which owns the Galleria. But 5 a.m. isn't the earliest chance you'll have to shop Friday: KB Toys will open some of its stores at midnight, and others, including CompUSA, will be open Thursday evening. And yet the expanded hours might not be worth the cost, considering that Black Friday isn't what it used to be:

"It makes for a flashy start. But in recent years, the overall weekend has been just ho-hum," said Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers. "I just don't know whether this is the kind of strategy that makes for a good holiday season."

Black Friday is no longer the busiest shopping day of the holiday season — that's now the Saturday before Christmas — but it's still a big moneymaker, pulling in $8 billion last year (though that was down nearly 1 percent from the year before). But if Americans no longer fall for it, retailers hope foreigners will: This year, a division of Simon sent a team overseas to market Black Friday to tour operators. "They all want to be part of the American shopping experience," Chelsea Property Senior Vice President of Marketing Michele Rothstein said. "This is power shopping at its best."

Shoppers, foreign and domestic, have fun navigating the stores in the pre-dawn Friday — you can tell Houstonist all about it after we wake up.

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Photo: flickr user Houstonian