US crowds pick up slightly on Black Friday

(Justin Wan/Sioux City Journal via AP). While there remain pockets of weakness, especially among teen-apparel retailers and department stores, many chains – including Home Depot Inc., TJX Cos. and Best Buy Co. – reported healthy sales gains in the latest quarter.

If you’re joining the more than 137 million people shopping during Thanksgiving weekend, you can give yourself an advantage by pre-planning. Times may vary by location.

The push to start Cyber Monday deals earlier follows what’s been happening with Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, which used to officially kick off the holiday shopping season in stores.

Those types of anchor stores opened on Thanksgiving Day at CBL’s properties, because they had exterior entrances.

Around 6 a.m. there was really not huge crowd in various malls including Sawgrass Mills, so far, but that was expected to change.

“My wife and daughter are out shopping”, Michael Morgan said.

The holiday shopping season, which runs through Christmas on December 25, can account for as much as 40 percent of retailers’ annual sales.

Here is everything you need to know about Cyber Monday this year.

Look at Target, where pre-Black Friday e-sales topped last year’s Cyber Monday sales.

Like Amazon and Walmart, Target also enticed people to its app this year by offering customers pre-sale deals via its Cartwheel savings application, which resulted in the biggest shopping day ever for new users of the app. Retailers try to attract shoppers with deep discounts, sometimes as much as 85 percent.

“We’re three hours in and the registers are still sizzling, so that’s good to see”, Bellows said as he peered at the long lines of shoppers waiting to checkout. The retailer was offering a 50-inch Hisense 4K TV for $249.99.

This weekend is crucial to set the tone for the holiday season. Increasingly, the 44-year-old is doing more of her shopping online.

Tablets had some of the steepest price markdowns online this Black Friday, with an average discount of 25.4 percent, Adobe said.

It also said more than 60 percent of its online sales came from shoppers using their phones. That means that online sales could account for 18 percent of overall holiday sales. Macy’s said 16,000 people lined up before the store opened at 5 p.m.

“Last year I brought my 13-year-old for the first time, and this year I brought my 12-year-old”, she said.

“I’m a point-and-click person”, she said. Walmart has made major investments in its app recently, and the retailer chose to offer certain deals exclusively via app for the first time ever this year.

Dante Pierre-Louis, 18, and his younger brother pried their father out of bed at 4 a.m.to take them shopping.