U.S. retailers ushered in the start of the holiday season Friday with expanded hours, big discounts and free gift cards.

In a slowing but still steady economy, retailers like Wal-Mart were increasing the sales pitch to shoppers, hoping to grab customer dollars on the day after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday.

Shopper Mark Nicodemus, from Batavia, Ohio, carts his purchased items from an Eastgate Wal-Mart early Friday.
(David Kohl/Associated Press)

A growing number of stores and malls threw open their doors at midnight to jump-start the season, and CompUSA and BJ's Wholesale Club even opened on Thanksgiving for the first time to grab customer dollars before the competition does.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, which promised its most aggressive price strategy ever this holiday season, used heavily discounted flat-screen TVs to attract shoppers to its doors for its 5 a.m. opening on Black Friday, so named because it's traditionally when the surge of shopping makes stores profitable.

Meanwhile, Sears Holdings Corp.'s Sears, Roebuck and Co., which opened at 5 a.m. Friday, one hour earlier than a year ago, gave out $10 US reward cards for the first 200 shoppers that show up to the stores. Other early bird specials included 50 per cent discounts on many toys. At Sears Holdings' Kmart stores, shoppers will find 50 per cent discounts on men's and women's outerwear as part of its early morning doorbusters.

"Retailers are doing more to get consumers into the stores earlier this year," said C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group, based in Charleston, S.C.

Determined to buy a flat-screen plasma TV, Laurie Field and her father were first in line at a Best Buy store in Little Rock, Ark., 16 hours before the doors opened.

"My mom is at home, taking a nap. She thinks that my dad and I are nuts," Field said.

In Florida, the parking lot at a 24-hour Wal-Mart in Orange Park near Jacksonville was filled by 4:45 a.m., despite temperatures not far above freezing.

Inside, Josh Jones, 22, and his 24-year-old wife, April, later stocked up on video games and DVDs. "The cheaper the better," April Jones said. "We're newlyweds so we don't have a lot of money."

While Black Friday "officially" starts holiday shopping, it's generally no longer the busiest day of the season — that honour now falls to the last Saturday before Christmas. But stores see Black Friday as setting an important tone to the overall season: What consumers see that day influences where they will shop for the rest of the season.

Last year, total U.S. retail sales dipped 0.9 per cent to $8 billion US on the Friday after Thanksgiving, dampened by deep discounting, from the year-ago period, according to Shopper Trak RCT Corp., which tracks total sales at more than 45,000 mall-based retail outlets. For the Thanksgiving weekend, total sales rose just 0.4 per cent to $16.8 billion US.

Still, last year, merchants ended up meeting their holiday sales figures, helped by a last-minute buying surge and post-Christmas shopping.

This year, analysts expect robust holiday sales gains for the overall retail industry, though the pace is expected to be slower than a year ago. The National Retail Federation projects a five per cent gain in total holiday sales for the November-December period, less than the 6.1 per cent in the year-ago period.

Meanwhile, the International Council of Shopping Centers estimates same-store sales will rise three per cent in the November-December period, less than last year's 3.6 per cent.