Even with holiday creep, Black Friday is a big shopping day

Black Friday used to be the most exciting shopping day of the year. Many Black Friday sales started online on Thanksgiving Day, or even earlier in the week.

“Black Friday doorbusters were happening on Thanksgiving night instead, so we weren’t getting that volume of people early on Friday anymore”, Reiss said.

Nearly no one goes retail shopping on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, when large numbers of people are traveling. EBay Inc.is trying to push the selling even earlier: It rebranded the day before Thanksgiving as Mobile Wednesday, using discounts to target traveling Americans.

“They got me on the bandwagon”, she said.

Find a location with sufficient Internet capability if you have to, but remember that there are many other people doing the same thing – and Internet shopping in public comes with security risks.

John Rogers, chief executive of Sainsbury’s Argos, told BBC Radio 4´s Today programme that between midnight and 1am on Friday the catalogue retailer saw “over 500,000 visits to the website, up 50% year on year”.

The competition to grab customers first is keen: Macy’s opens at 5 p.m. Thursday, an hour earlier than a year ago after seeing Penney’s open at 3 p.m. last year.

“This day is huge for us”.

This is also another holiday season without a hot “must-have” item.

“Kate Spade has a great sale, 70 percent off, we also have some stuff for the kids and J Crew, 60 percent off, cannot go wrong”, Christina Mojica said.

But Cyber Monday, the special day for online retail deals aimed at people in front of computers, began to expand.

At 7 a.m. on Friday morning, the parking lot of The Avenue West Cobb was sparsely decorated with the cars of shoppers hoping to be the first in line.

Steve Bratspies, who is chief merchandising officer at Wal-Mart’s US division, says in addition to picking up Black Friday favorites like televisions and toys, shoppers were looking for drones, virtual reality products and hoverboards.

Whether you plan on taking advantage of the week’s deals or opt for a more financially conservative take this year, remember: Invest in yourself by investing in your financial future. “There’s specialty items; some food vendors have exclusive drinks”, Mones said.

Both kinds of customers were at the Mall of America in Minnesota – which was closed on Thanksgiving this year – on Friday morning. “It’s really important because, if not, you miss everything”, said Dean.

The shoppers were back at Dolphin Mall and Dadeland Mall Friday to score more deals. Walmart, for example, has separate lines within the store for different products. We’ve been up all night. While other shoppers may have taken advantage of retail stores opening doors on Thanksgiving Day, Powell said they made a decision to just stick with what has been kind of a family tradition. And I’ve collected my share of anecdotal evidence that stores are still plenty busy: I’ve seen lines hundreds of people deep outside of a Best Buy, and I could swear I felt my blood pressure rising in the Macy’s at Tysons Corner one year because the store was pulsing with so many people. Exhausted from hours of shopping, and with multiple shopping bags in each hand, the teens rested their legs on the floor near Macy’s department store.

“Other than that one time, we’ve never had a bad experience”, said Hertenstein, who was shopping for a basketball at MC Sports in the Lima Mall. “Usually, I don’t like to come”.