Black Friday shopping draws out the early morning crowds

The numbers are three times the people who went out to shop on Thanksgiving.

“Wednesday night, we made sure the store was fully stocked, and everything was nice and clean”, said one retailer. The e-commerce behemoth has been luring shoppers with its free, two-day shipping membership program and an increased focus on fashion that’s challenging even industry stalwarts like Macy’s, Drbul said.

Some say it’s turning into Black Thursday not Friday, and they’re none to happy about it.

The Macy’s store at Water Tower Place mall on a rainy Chicago morning saw thin crowds in the early hours of Friday. She said she tries to hike every year after Thanksgiving and likes to avoid the shopping crowds. Analysts at Cowen & Co said Target stood out with its “innovative promotions”, and teen retailer American Eagle Outfitters Inc saw more traffic due to store-wide discounts of 40 percent.

Both figures included online shopping, with 42 percent saying they planned to shop in stores Friday. A typical mixture of strong winds and heavy rain across Britain and memories of last year’s scuffles were likely to have encouraged more Britons to shop online this year.

“What’s fun though is we see families”. “I think the weather was really in our favor because people were still out shopping at 3 a.m”.

Most of the stores at Assembly Row in Somerville opened between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m., said Matt Ehrie, Assembly Row’s general manager, although K Mart and Sports Authority kicked off their Black Friday deals with openings not long after midnight. She introduced a bill to that effect earlier this year.

“We’ve planned this event for more than a year”.

When security opened the doors the dozen people waiting filed in to quietly browse the stacks of discounted goods, outnumbered by armies of staff and journalists.

However, 40 percent of the 1,537 consumers surveyed in September and October said they planned to spend more on holiday shopping this year, versus 25 percent saying the same last year.

But there was still evidence of consumer enthusiasm with one shopper revealing she had spent £300 online on a Playstation and four games before heading to Tesco (Xetra: 852647 – news) with her partner, with a plan to move on from there to Argos.

The next big shopping days are Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.

The roads to get to Black Friday shopping will be toughest to the South and West, which is where Channel 2’s Greg Nieto and Amanda Zitzman were this morning.

“I was looking for 70 per cent off”, she said. She said on average she got about 40 per cent to 50 per cent off but she was looking for more.

Mae Anderson in New York, Kristen Wyatt in Denver and Marc Levey in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania contributed to the report.