Best Buy is getting an early jump on the holiday shopping season this Saturday with robot and virtual reality demonstrations in 400 of its stores, including in Towson, Annapolis, Columbia, Bel Air and Owings Mills.
The electronics and appliance retailer is billing the day as a "Special Holiday Shopping Event," which will run from 1 p.m to 5 p.m. Saturday.
The stores' Geek Squad agents will lead demonstrations on items such as Google Home, a voice-activated speaker that responds to voice commands to listen to music, get Google answers and manage tasks, and Wonder Workshop's Dash Robot, which teaches preschoolers coding and responds to voice commands to sing and dance.
The retailer is also offering discounts and special deals on some items.
Retail sales are expected to rise 3.6 percent in the November and December holiday period to $655.8 billion, according to the National Retail Federation. The trade groups expects online sales to jump between 7 percent to 10 percent compared with last year to as much as $117 billion.
Retailers are expected to hire from 640,000 to 690,000 seasonal workers this year, NRF said.