Online Black Friday Jewelry Sales +17.6%

Hordes of buyers entered stores in shopping malls across the U.S. on Black Friday, the day after the Thanksgiving holiday. While traffic increased 2.2 percent from 2009, actual spending edged up just 0.3 percent to $10.690 billion, according to ShopperTrak, which records sales and customer traffic at more than 70,000 stores and malls. Online spending, however, was far better and delivered double-digit growth.

Online sales increased 15.9 percent, with consumers pushing the average order value up to $190.80 from $170.19, an increase of 12.1 percent over 2009, according to Coremetrics, which measure retailers’ e-commerce data.

Jewelry retailers reported a 17.6 percent increase in sales, reported Coremetrics, which said that affluent shoppers appeared very willing to open their wallets.

ShopperTrak said early holiday sales and door buster promotions impacted Friday’s performance. The company said it saw some unexpected strength in early November when sales and traffic for the first two weeks of the month through November 13 increased 6.1 and 6.2 percent respectively.

NRF estimated that 2010 holiday sales would increase 2.3 percent to $447.1 billion. IDEX Online forecast jewelry sales to increase by 3 percent at most. Diamond jewelry sales alone are predicted to go up by no more than 2 percent.