Walmart U.S. Reports Best Ever Black Friday Events

BENTONVILLE, Ark., Nov. 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Walmart U.S. reported its best ever Black Friday events. The retailer saw larger crowds than last year and 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."

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.

Since its events began at 8 p.m., Walmart sold more than:

• 1.8 million towels,
• 1.3 million televisions,
• 1.3 million dolls and
• 250,000 bicycles.

"We had very safe and successful Black Friday events at our stores across the country and heard overwhelmingly positive feedback from our customers," Simon said.

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