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Black Friday ushers in the holiday season

News Photo by Julie Goldberg Shoppers wait for Black Friday sales to begin Thursday at Walmart.

ALPENA — The holidays officially kicked off Thursday as shoppers were at local stores ready to start their Black Friday shopping.

Lines filled Walmart before the sales started at 6 p.m. Thursday. People were using their phones and ads to find the best deals for themselves or for Christmas gifts for others.

Kristy Morgan, a front end team leader at the store, said the lines of people keep everything organized, and Walmart employees were around the store making sure the lines stayed together before the sales began.

Tape was used to block people from going into certain areas before the sales began to keep everything organized.

Shopping Thursday at the store is very busy, but is an organized chaos, Morgan said.

“People shop until we run out of merchandise,” she said.

The most popular section at Walmart is electronics, Morgan said. People look for TVs, bluetooth items, different Apple products and other items.

TheBlackFriday.com, a website dedicated to showing people the best deals at different stores, predicts that some of the biggest shopping items this year will be TVs, tablets or iPads, different smartphones, video games, video doorbells, and others.

The shopping continues today as people will fill the stores trying to find the best sales. Morgan said it will be another day filled with shopping, but it’s more spread out during the day. She said everyone will not have to purchase everything they want in just a few hours.

Forbes reported last year that online sales brought in $3.7 billion on Thanksgiving Day, while on Black Friday, people spent over $6.2 billion online.

Julie Goldberg can be reached at 989-358-5688 or jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jkgoldberg12.

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