‘Not as bad as I thought’: Champaign shoppers surprised by quieter Black Friday

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WCIA) — Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Usually you’re looking at lines out the door — but this year was different in Champaign.

“It actually isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be,” said Black Friday shopper Gracie McCartney. “I thought it was going to be a lot more people and a lot more like, fighting for stuff. But actually, it’s nice.”

People like McCartney woke up at 5:30 a.m. to get their shopping in.

“We just wanted to get here before all the stores open and before all the lines got way too long,” she said.

Shoppers said Market Place Mall wasn’t as packed as it could have been, so where were people finding the best deals?

“We first went to Bath and Body [Works],” said Riley Miller, a first-time Black Friday shopper, “and we got a lot of Christmas presents for people and like, Wallflower scents. And then we went to Sephora and we got a bunch of makeup sets because they were on sale.”

Miller was spending birthday money.

“I’m excited because Target has buy-two, get-one-free on books, and I’m excited to see what books they have,” she said.

Miller said she would be upset if the books she wanted were sold out in-store, but that she could still search for the same sale online. Miller might be one of many other people who will take their chances on finding deals during the next big shopping holiday: Cyber Monday.

According to the National Retail Federation, they estimate that 182 million people plan to shop in stores and online from Thanksgiving day through Cyber Monday this year. This number is 15.7 million more people than last year, and is the highest estimate since 2017, when the NRF started tracking this data.