Photos: Black Friday shoppers hit the deals early, with big lines seen at Ontario Mills
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Early birds in their comfy shoes and sweatshirts headed to area malls on Black Friday for a tried and true tradition: American treasure hunting.
That treasure? Deals. Lots and lots of deals.
Retailers this season are pushing the plush and cozy and the gross. (Think weighted blankets for mom and slime masquerading as unicorn poop for the kids). Stores are also making things a bit easier for shoppers with pay-in-the-aisles technology.
Lines were spotted at area Best Buys, where shoppers line up for deals on big TVs and marked down laptops and games. Discounts at Ontario Mills had lines forming throughout the mall.
The longest line at Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance was at Starbucks.
At the trendy South Coast Plaza, a crowd anxious for doorbuster deals, held in check by security guards, formed at the LEGO store.
With online deals aplenty, why bother braving the crowds? Perhaps, said Steven Barr, consumer markets expert at PwC, it’s because there is something more powerful out in the mayhem.
“On a day like Black Friday, it’s not about convenience. It’s purely about emotion,” Barr said. “A website can’t give you goose bumps.”
The holiday shopping season presents a big test for a U.S. economy, whose overall growth so far this year has relied on a burst of consumer spending. Americans upped their spending during the first half of 2018 at the strongest pace in four years, yet retail sales gains have tapered off recently. The sales totals over the next month will be a good indicator as to whether consumers simply paused to catch their breath or feel less optimistic about the economy in 2019.
The National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, was expecting holiday retail sales to increase as much as 4.8 percent over 2017 for a total of $720.89 billion. The sales growth marks a slowdown from last year’s 5.3 percent but remains healthy.
The retail economy is also tilting steeply toward online shopping. Over the past 12 months, purchases at non-store retailers such as Amazon have jumped 12.1 percent as sales at traditional department stores have slumped 0.3 percent. Adobe Analytics reported Thursday that Thanksgiving reached a record $3.7 billion in online retail sales, up 28 percent from the same year-ago period. For Black Friday, online spending was on track to hit more than $6.4 billion, according to Adobe.
Target reported that shoppers bought big-ticket items like TVs, iPads, and Apple Watches. Among the most popular toy deals were Lego, L.O.L. Surprise from MGA Entertainment and Mattel’s Barbie. It said gamers picked up video game consoles like Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One.
By mid-day Friday, there had not been widespread reports of the deal-inspired chaos that has become central to Black Friday lore — fist fights over discounted televisions or stampedes toward coveted sale items.
Two men at an Alabama mall got into a fight, and one of the men opened fire, shooting the other man and a 12-year-old bystander, both of whom were taken to the hospital with injuries. Police shot and killed the gunman. Authorities have not said whether the incident was related to Black Friday shopping or if it stemmed from an unrelated dispute.
The Associated Press and The Washington Post contributed to this report.