Black Friday shoppers flock to Westfield Palm Desert
Bulky bags and large discounts are all around Westfield Palm Desert, a sign that Black Friday shopping has arrived.
“We’re going to save a lot of money. Give a lot of gifts for a lot of people,” Betsy Lyons, a shopper, said.
A wide variety of gifts are being bought as shoppers made their early Christmas purchases. For one girl Black Friday happened to fall on her 17th birthday which meant a shopping spree with her hard earned cash.
“It feels pretty good, but then ugh, it feels kind of heart breaking because I’m wasting a lot of money and like I get carried away sometimes,” Aryana Puentes said.
However, some other shoppers had more restraint with their budget.
“I don’t go over 50 …50 dollars,” Karleigh Bowers declared.
Cheap or not shoppers are turning out to make their purchases in shops like Bath and Body works at the mall.
“More traffic. More intent to buy so there’s a lot of people coming in,” Cristina Miller, a Bath and Body Works supervisor, said. “I can really tell like maybe double…triple the sales. That goes for all of the mall do as well.”
According to statistics from IBM, retail sales are expected to grow by 4.8% nationwide for the holiday shopping season. That’s an increase from last year’s growth of 4.2%.
After getting their hauls, shoppers the key to avoiding any potential chaos is timing.
“Get here early. It wasn’t busy and now it seems to be picking up a lot so I’m glad we’re almost done,” Lyons said.
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