A slow start to Black Friday in downtown Vancouver
Posted November 23, 2012 7:27 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – It’s the Super Bowl of shopping: Black Friday.
This year, more local businesses are trying to keep deal-seekers on this side of the border. So, we went downtown to check the lineups this morning.
Outside H&M at about 7 a.m., we found Paige and her two friends. They got up at about 5:30 a.m. to catch the first bus downtown so they could beat the Black Friday rush at H&M.
“[I think they] will be giving away gift cards for the first hundred people in line. I think they range from $5 to $300,” she tells us.
The Bay is the first store that opened downtown. There were no stampedes, elbows, or fights — just about a dozen people calmly filing into the store.
When we checked in the wee hours of this morning, we were hard-pressed to find anyone in line.
The longest queue we found contained just two very wet and bored people camped out in front of the Foot Locker, where the brand new Air Jordans are being released today.
It’s was quiet outside Future Shop, which is also having a Black Friday sale to try to lure shoppers away from the deals in Washington State. No one was waiting outside the Best Buy on Cambie when we checked early this morning.
Black Friday is huge in the States, where people have made it their annual ritual to go to bed early after munching on turkey for that country’s Thanksgiving so they can head out to stores early the next day.
But it’s been very quiet at the border this morning. Southbound waits have been very minimal.
Greg Harper with Citytv’s Breakfast Television spoke with Canadian shoppers coming back home. “Some say they found some deals; they found some clothes and TVs. Others say ‘It’s not worth it. I didn’t find anything at all!'”
It’s called Black Friday because it’s traditionally when American stores turn a profit for the year.
