Black Friday Frenzy Starts in Dark

AURORA — The sun was still hours east of the horizon, the air temperature still blowing around somewhere between freezing and absolute zero.

And hard-core bargain hunters were ready to buy, buy, buy.

Like the holiday shopping season itself, the post-Thanksgiving day of stupendous sales seems to start earlier every year.

Most national retailers opened their doors at 5 a.m. or earlier Friday, luring customers out early with free gifts or drastic mark-downs on the season's hottest sellers.

At the Chicago Premium Outlets, on Aurora's Far East Side, the action began around 4:30.

It was an hour that could produce only one kind of shopper: serious, focused, and willing to stand in long lines under a cold moon.

And stand they did, clutching steaming Starbucks cups and checking the clocks on their cell phones.

Even as the crowd grew, the dark courtyards hung on to an air of quiet expectation.
The Christmas music hadn't even started yet; conversations were few and hushed.

Among the questions no one was asking was the plainest: Why do they do it?

The answer would have made notorious bank robber Willie Sutton proud.

"Because that's when the sale is," said Katie Jones, a Montgomery woman waiting to be one of the first into the mall's Sony store.

She said she was looking to walk out with an impossibly cheap plasma TV before pausing for a moment of guilt. "I'm sorry grandkids, I'm not shopping for you."

The lines were particularly long and slow moving outside stores like Diesel. The fashionable denim dealer was offering 50 percent off all merchandise from 5 to 7 a.m., and needed a door guard to make sure shoppers going in matched the number coming out.

Once inside, the quiet calm gave way as numb fingers thawed to join a frenzy of grabbing hands and ringing cash registers.

"It's definitely an experience," said Dave Worley. The St. Charles father never has taken part in the day-after-Thanksgiving shopping rush, nicknamed Black Friday in the retail industry as the day when stores see their bottom lines switch from the red ink of debt into the black of profit.

But as far as Worley was concerned, the blackness had more to do with the fact that he was standing around outside in the dark of night for the chance to drop a hundred bucks on a pair of jeans.

It was worth it, though, he said, as a way to spend some time with his 23-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son — and maybe recapture his "hipness."

"I wanted to stay in the mainstream," he laughed.

Mainstream or not, he certainly wasn't lacking for company. By sunrise, the mall was reasonably crowded.

By 9 a.m., even the Cold Stone Creamery was making sales.

"It looks like it's going to be a very good day," said the mall's general manager, Mark Sejd. "It looks like we're going to surpass last year."

Judging by the packed parking lots from the area's Wal-Marts and Best Buys to Westfield Fox Valley, the season seemed to be getting off to a good start everywhere.

This week, the National Retail Federation raised its predictions for holiday season revenues, saying the industry should rake in about $440 billion this November and December. That would be a growth of 6 percent over last year's holiday sales.

The NRF, an advocacy and analysis group for the retail industry, said it expects more than 130 million shoppers to hit the nation's stores this weekend.

"Many stores opened earlier than ever before, and retailers offered unbelievable sales ... to get people shopping," said NRF president Tracy Mullin.

"Lukewarm promotions on Black Friday won't get consumers out of bed, so most stores went all out this year to ensure that they were part of the holiday hype."

If Friday's crowds were a sign that the hype was working, the NRF's annual survey of consumer intentions was another. The average shopper, the survey found, plans to spend at least $820 on their holiday shopping.