Shopping season’s sales soar
‘It’S AN ADRENALINE RUSH’
That could’ve been the reason some thought this year’s Black Friday felt more like Blah Friday.
At Target in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Center, Gianni Romero, 44, said the maze of barricades by the exit seemed a little much.
“I wonder why there aren’t more people here. I made sure to get up bright and early to snag a deal on this TV,” he said, cradling a massive box.
The Dyker Heights man confessed he’d assumed the day had good deals.
“Anyway, it’s a good excuse to get out of bed,” he said.
One of the day’s deals was the purr-fect price — free.
The ASPCA hosted its fifth-annual Cat Friday event at its Upper East Side location, waiving its adoption fee of $125 on a kitten and $75 on a cat more than 1 year old.
The animal-rescue group said that by the evening 101 animals had been adopted through the event, including three dogs.
Tiffany Fairclough, 30, of Richmond Hill, showed up at the adoption center unaware that she’d be getting a deal.
“I was thinking I was going to come here today or tomorrow but something told me to just come here today,” said Fairclough, who left with an adorable black kitten named Atreyu.
Over at Macy’s flagship Herald Square department store, Upper East Sider June Sullivan, 67, was all good with the hordes.
“I don’t see the crowds as a problem because it’s just festive, and a common cause for me,” she said.
And trying out new perfumes wasn’t so bad, either, Sullivan said.
Outside the Midtown shopping mecca, Reverend Billy and his Stop Shopping Choir sang about the evils of credit cards and consumerism.
But inside, the masses reduced foot traffic to a slow crawl.
There were some grumpy tweets across the country that the department store was having problems processing credit cards and gift cards.
By early evening, Macy’s said it had fixed the issues and apologized for any inconvenience to shoppers: “The delays we experienced this afternoon were due to a capacity-related issue that caused some transactions to take longer to process. We do not anticipate any additional delays.” THE BRAWLING, like the coast-to-coast sales, came early on Black Friday this year.
The run-amok merchandise mayhem of years past was largely absent on the day after Thanksgiving 2017 as signs pointed toward a good Christmas buying season for America’s retailers.
The hottest toys were flying off shelves, Macy’s reported a jump in its holiday shopping crowds and Amazon mobile app use was through the roof on Friday.
“The turnout this morning has been relatively slow, but it is still the best we have seen in three years,” said Burt Flickinger, managing director of the Strategic Resources Group. “We expect it to pick up as the day progresses.”
The good news came as no surprise to analysts who predicted the recent economic surge would translate into a sales increase bigger than the 3.6% boost of 2016.
U.S. online shoppers spent an estimated $2.87 billion on Thanksgiving, up strongly from 2016. Officials estimated $5 billion in web sales for Black Friday.
Sarah Jones, who works at the Roosevelt Field Mall on Long Island, said the online buyers inevitably give way to the actual shoppers at the brick and mortar outlets.
“Right now, they are at toy stores and electronic stores,” said confident veteran Jones, 42. “They’ll trickle in a little later and we’ll be waiting. I’ve worked in retail my whole life — trust me.”
There were no reports of the violence that plagued Black Fridays past, although a pair of incidents were reported on Thanksgiving evening.
A 19-year-old Missouri man was hit by a stray bullet fired inside a parked car at the Columbia Mall around 11:24 p.m., police said.
The gunshot victim man was battling for his life after a second man’s gun accidentally went off in the mall’s north parking lot. The bullet was fired as the second man tried to holster the weapon, and cops said no arrests were made.
Alabama’s largest shopping mall reopened for Black Friday, hours after it was shuttered 40 minutes early following a Thanksgiving night brawl inside the Riverchase Galleria.