The weather was frigid Friday morning, but when it comes to enjoying the Black Friday shopping ritual, Keanna Avery and her mother Tanya Anderson, both from Oswego, say there’s nothing that gets in their way.
“This is mother-daughter time and we don’t care,” Avery said as she and her mother visited the Chicago Premium Outlets mall in Aurora well before 8 a.m. “Honestly, I don’t have a particular thing I’m looking for. I’m just looking for all the good deals out here. This is a ritual. We just have to do it.”
Aurora area shopping malls and other retailers were abuzz Friday morning, with some stores opening early in the morning to handle all the Black Friday shoppers.
According to the National Retail Federation, “183.4 million people will shop over this holiday weekend, with Americans projected to spend up to $989 billion … about $902 per person.”
The number of people expected to shop over the weekend would break the previous record of 182 million set last year.
The federation also said the leading two reasons for consumer shopping during Black Friday “are because the deals are too good to pass up” and, like Avery and her mother, “it is tradition.”
Anderson and her daughter got to the outlet mall around 7:30 a.m. Friday, but said they had been out since 4 a.m.
“We’ve made six or seven stops already,” she said with a laugh. “We’ve got our coupons, we’ve got some sales and we’ve got a couple of things here. We shop for each other sometimes too even though it spoils the surprise. We normally take a break for lunch, but we’re going to be out here all day until 9 or 10 tonight.”
Jose Gonzalez of Naperville was likewise braving the elements Friday morning at Chicago Premium Outlets.
“My wife is still in there shopping, and I’ve just been bringing loads to the car,” he said while carrying a box in his arms. “This thing I have is the only thing I’ve gotten for myself. We’re here this early to avoid the rush and hopefully get some discounts you normally don’t get.”
Retailers including Carolina Cruz, manager of the Steve Madden store at the outlet mall, said the Black Friday crowd was a healthy one at the shopping center.
“We opened at 6 a.m. and we expected things to be packed with all the shoppers trying to spend all their money. Right now, we’ve seen a lot of traffic with people, a lot of shoppers,” she said Friday morning. “It was 5:30 in the morning here and cars were already parked and people were making lines to big stores like Nike and North Face and Uggs. This will definitely be one of our biggest days of the year. We always think Black Friday is a big event.”
Cousins Maia McCullough from Tampa, Florida, and Emma Kraus of Geneva said they were starting a new holiday tradition of their own on Friday.
“This is the first year we’ve done it,” McCullough said of getting up early for a Black Friday shopping trip. “It’s not as crazy as we thought it would be, but we were warned. We probably hit seven stores already but we’ve almost wrapped things up.”
“The goal today is to buy something for myself,”Kraus said. “I didn’t do any research or look at the ads. I’m just shopping blindly.”
Meanwhile in Batavia, crowds were just as big at the Target store at 115 N. Randall Road.
Friends Kari Rogerson of Sugar Grove and Kate Male of Big Rock said they left their “husbands at home and we’re starting a new tradition together.”
“This is our first annual,” Rogerson said. “We found each other and we are mom bonding. We’ve done this with our moms but we left the kids with our husbands and this is a new tradition.”
“The goal today is to shop and get it all done in one day because we’re busy women,” Male said. “I like the deals. We didn’t do any research, but it doesn’t matter because we’re going to visit all the shops and hopefully get lucky.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
