Shoppers flock to Desert Hills Premium Outlets for Black Friday deals

Crowds flocking to the outlets, people sitting in lawn chairs, all the sights you’d expect to see Black Friday.

But there’s a few new things you might see like signs in Mandarin and Japanese.

“We have people from all over the world. We need to make sure we can accommodate those individuals when they’re coming here. We want them to have a great shopping experience so we hire Mandarin speaking people, we have signage throughout the center,” said Elizabeth Perkovich the director of marketing and business development.

It’s all in an effort to cater to shoppers like Happy Hu from China.

Hu is here studying abroad and said there’s nothing better than American Black Friday deals.

“We have some, but it’s not as cheep as here,” Hu said.

He’s been at the outlets for nearly 10 hours buying pants shoes and shorts.

“I love the atmosphere here. It’s like a holiday,” Hu said.

And the nearly $2,000 he’s spent, well he said it’s all worth it.

Hu isn’t the only out-of-towner dropping some serious cash.

Karla Breen and her friends started shopping in Los Angeles Thursday at 6 p.m.

But when the deals weren’t good enough, they came here.

“This is one of the places that has the best deals and we have a friend who is visiting from Spain. She wanted to do some shopping so we might as well take advantage of it too,” Breen said.

And when asked how much she’s spent.

“Too much, easily between all of us over $2,000,” Breen said.

That is good news to retailers at the outlets, who saw the parking structure begin to get full just after the stroke of midnight.

“Right around midnight for a couple of hours we had to close the parking structure so we can reroute them and have them park in other location. They might have had to go to the Morongo Casino and park and shuttle over but we were at full capacity last night for the midnight crowd,” Perkovich said.

Come morning the crowds were still roaming the mall, cashing in on some great deals.

This is the third year Desert Hills Premium Outlets opened at 10 a.m. Thanksgiving Day after hearing shoppers wanted more time.

“We had about a 38 percent increase. So I feel like that’s beneficial. We want to meet the needs of the shopper and make it a great, fun, relaxing shopping experience during the madness of Black Friday,” Perkovich said.

It gives shoppers 36 hours to get their deals and steals before closing at 10 o’clock Friday night.