Minnesotans brave wind chills below zero to grab Black Friday deals

It may not have been the frenzy of the early 2000s, but there were still hundreds of people in line this morning braving below zero wind chills to find holiday deals at Mall of America.

Ahead of doors opening Friday at 7 a.m., mall employees dressed in raindeer ears and other festive gears prepared prizes and mystery gift tickets for the chilly crowds gathered outside.

Guillermo Davilla, who was 10th in line, came to Bloomington at 4 p.m Thursday with his three cousins, with a winter coat and plenty of blankets, to get his holiday shopping started early. At about 7:25, the mall began passing out prizes including a buzzy Lego set, Vikings tickets, a KitchenAid stand mixer and a night at the Radisson Blue hotel in the mall.

In the Eastern states, Target employees handed out hot chocolate to early shoppers at the stores searching for the Minneapolis-based retailer’s exclusive Taylor Swift book that gives a behind-the-scenes look at the singer’s internationally sold-out Eras Tour and a vinyl album of previously digital-only tracks.

“There are many retail [stores] leaning into this branding opportunity with Wicked,” including the Legos store, Crocs, Claires and even Lush, said MOA Chief Marketing Officer Jill Renslow on Wednesday. “It’s exciting.”

MOA has seen larger crowds this fall, so it was planning on a strong Black Friday. “We’re having a really good year,” Renslow said.

MOA sales are already up 5% from 2023, making her believe the mall will beat the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) prediction that holiday sales will jump only a modest 2.5% to 3.5%.

This weekend is still important, especially this year, because the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is six days shorter than last year.

Deloitte, after surveying consumers earlier this month, said two-thirds said they would shop Black Friday, either online or at brick-and-mortar stores.

“We’re already trending beyond that year to date,” Renslow said. On top of Black Friday’s crowds, early holiday shoppers were securing deals ahead of time. Some shoppers are concerned with this year’s shorter holiday shopping season since Thanksgiving fell so late in Novermber this year, Renslow said. The NRF expecs shoppers to spend more than $900 on holiday gifts this year.

Separately, economists predict that more than 150 million shoppers will do some form of shopping on Black Friday.

To lure customers, Rosedale Center in Roseville also has special discounts for Black Friday. For example, there are $5 discounts on photos with Santa, provided families reserve their slots online. This year’s Santa castle is 35 feet tall. Baldamar Restaurant and the new Woodhouse Spa partnered together to give away cross promotional gift cards to customers.

But mall senior manager Molly King said she did not expect elbow-jabbing lines with so many deals arriving early this year.

Even with promotions and discounts most economists are only expecting a “2% to 3%[sales] lift for the whole holiday season,” said Mary Van Note, a former Fallon ad executive who cofounded the Minneapolis brand-strategy firm Ginger Consulting with fellow Fallon alum Beth Perro-Jarvis.

“One of the things that we’ve kind of observed is that there doesn’t appear to be any real ‘It” tech or toy gift this year,” Perro-Jarvis said. “There isn’t that one thing that everybody talks about, and says, ‘I got to get to that store before that thing sells out!’ Certainly, there are things that are getting buzzed, but not nearly to the heightened degree that we usually see. “

Retailers offering video games this year are sure to win out. A recent study found “72% of kids who are 10 to 19 [years old] want a gaming related gift,” Van Note said.

Instead, to gin up excitement, retailers are simply tossing out a “deluge of deals. They are early and everywhere, so Black Friday is going to be maybe a little bit more ho hum this year,” " Perro-Jarvis said.

Van Note noticed stores are turning to events to help whisk people inside. The hope is if “it’s a fun event, you’ll want to get out there for the experience and to see the displays and the lights and the music and just be part of it. But it’s less about the best deals than maybe it used to be.”