Shoppers, CEOs excited for early start to Black Friday

Naimo Khalif had been standing in line outside the Best Buy store in Roseville for five hours in the bone-chilling cold when a curious silver-haired man walked by with a big grin, shaking hands and handing out fliers.

Some asked if he was the store manager.

Not quite. It was Hubert Joly, the chief executive of the Richfield-based electronics chain, who was there to welcome the crowds on one of the biggest nights in retail.

"My hands are freezing," Khalif, of St. Paul, told him, showing him her reddened fingers. His were, too, he commiserated.

But, Khalif said later, a little numbness in her toes and fingers was worth it in order to get deals on a TV and PlayStation 4.

Joly couldn't contain his excitement either for the kickoff to Black Friday, which had one of the earliest starts yet this year with many stores opening on Thanksgiving night an hour or two earlier than last year.

He pumped his fists in the air at a pep rally with employees before the store opened at 5 p.m., an hour earlier than in 2013. He peeked outside the door, playfully asking the crowd if they wanted to come in. And when the first customer walked in, he hugged him.

Despite temperatures that dropped into the single digits Thursday night around the Twin Cities, throngs of shoppers still lined up outside of stores in the earliest start yet to the Black Friday shopping bonanza.

While some shoppers said they didn't like the earlier openings that infringed on their time with families, they nonetheless showed up, lured by deals on iPads and HDTVs as well as toys and video game consoles.

Brian Cornell, the CEO of Minneapolis-based Target, spent Thursday night at a store in New York City, where he was encouraged to see hundreds of people stream through the doors when they opened at 6 p.m., two hours ahead of last year.

"While it's still early in the evening, it looks like we had a very good turnout," he said an hour later of the reports he had received thus far from around the country.

While he was initially concerned about the recent snowstorm along the East Coast possibly deterring crowds, he said that didn't end up being a problem.

Cornell had a late night ahead of him. He planned to check out some competitors such as Macy's and Toys 'R' Us later that night before ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Friday morning.

About 26 million people were expected to shop in stores and online on Thanksgiving, according to the National Retail Federation, slightly down from last year because of the early Black Friday sales throughout the month. But the shopping over the four-day Black Friday weekend from Thursday to Sunday is expected to draw a much larger overall crowd, attracting 140 million shoppers — or six in 10 U.S. adults.

"Shop online? What's the fun of that?" asked Amber Winter of St. Paul as she shivered Thursday in the line outside Toys 'R' Us in Bloomington, which opened at 5 p.m.

Despite the cold and grumblings of deals being just as good if not better online, Winter said shopping on Thanksgiving is about the experience, "even if the deals aren't as good as they are later on," she said.

Shopping in stores gives her a better chance of hiding the presents from her four kids. "They get home from school before us, so they'd see the boxes and have them ripped open before we even got home," she said. "This way we can drop off the gifts at the relatives' before we get home tonight."

"But I think a lot of people are waiting in their cars" because of the cold, said Debbie Witschen, the store's manager.

One of the shoppers in the front of the line was 25-year-old Ali Swanson, who actually works at that store. She had been at the store until 4 a.m. helping to set it up, but didn't have to work on Thanksgiving night.

A Black Friday veteran, she expected to see a decent line when she showed up around 3 p.m. But when she didn't see anyone else there, she went to grab some coffee and returned soon after. She figured the cold was keeping some shoppers home until closer to the store's opening. Others, she added, might have still been finishing their Thanksgiving dinner.

"It's frustrating," she said of the earlier start, noting that this is the only time of year she can afford to buy Christmas gifts. "You kind of have to sacrifice either Thanksgiving or Christmas."

Best Buy's Joly said that people in retail know they have to work over the holidays. But he added that employees working Thanksgiving night were "mostly volunteers."

Khalif, the woman he had met standing in line, found him inside. She asked to take a photo with him. He was the first CEO she had ever met.

"What is your name?" she asked him.

"Hubert," he replied.