Black Friday starts early with ‘Grey Thursday’

The National Retail Federation expects the holiday shopping weekend to be busier than previous year. Almost 59% of Americans, around 137 million people, will shop from Thursday through Sunday.

Many shoppers took advantage of early Black Friday deals at many department stores on Thanksgiving.

“I think it’s a great deal”.

“Even though I might spend up to $300 on gifts altogether, I need to stretch my budget as far as I can to make that happen and get something for everyone on my list”, House said. “I just try to do for my kids what I can”.

“I brought my son to because he wanted to get a new TV so he was the main reason he came down”, customer Glenn Little said. “They have deals today, Black Friday will be a madhouse”, said Jeff Lyons, a shopper.

Warren said an hour before opening, store employees give tickets to the shoppers who are in line for the items they are hoping to buy.

“Last time I saw the line, it was one or two stores down”, says 8-year-old Logan Juszczyk. Kmart opened at 6 a.m. Thursday.

At the Vero Beach, Best Buy, for example, manager Paul Moss said the store had a lot of inventory available.

“The last couple years I’ve been missing it so I decided to make my priority this year to be in line early”, said Herbie Jay of Branford. Shoppers had a good idea of what they were looking for; many wanted the same thing.

Several dedicated shoppers even camped out over night in order to get their hands on a 49-inch flatscreen t-v.

Debra Young was the first outside Boston Store at Southridge, showing up at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, 3 1/2 hours before the doors opened.

“You don’t see those insane lines or people camping out any more, and I think it’s because everything is starting earlier and earlier”, Blair said.

For long hauls like that, Tamura said, it helps to have a spot to store their early bargain purchases so they can keep shopping.

But by 6 p.m., a lot of those same shoppers had already gravitated toward Walmart, where the deals were just starting to pile up as parking became scarce. Shoppers spent $1.15 billion online between midnight and 5 p.m. ET, a 13.6% increase over past year, reported Adobe Digital Insights.

Black Friday sales can be rather appealing, but the super sales offered by some of America’s most coveted retailers don’t come without a few headaches.