A steady rain drizzled over Hilo’s Home Depot early Friday, but that didn’t seem to deter Isaac and Shawn Kelii.
Minutes before the store’s 6 a.m. opening, the father-son duo were among the first in a line at least 100 people deep that soon was wrapping across the length of the hardware store and around the corner.
The Keliis had secured their spot at 3 p.m. Thursday. They’d decided to forgo a good night’s sleep — along with a traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner — and opted instead for Home Depot’s array of advertised Black Friday deals.
“We just talk stories,” dad Shawn Kelii said with a laugh Friday morning, when asked how they’d chosen to spend the 16-hour wait. “We came for the tools.”
Home Depot was among the busiest places in town early Black Friday, presumably because it was one of the few Hilo big box retailers to remain closed Thanksgiving. Wal-Mart was open standard hours both Thursday and Friday — 5 a.m. to midnight. Target opened at 6 p.m. Thanksgiving and remained open through 11 p.m. Friday.
Other retailers, including Macy’s, Sears and Old Navy, also opened on Thanksgiving and either remained open all night or closed overnight for a few hours before Black Friday.
“I think (staying open) is in response to demand,” said Debbie Ricketts, a volunteer employee with the Puff Puff Express children’s kiosk inside the Prince Kuhio Plaza. “A lot of people, right after they have Thanksgiving (dinner), they want to get straight to the shopping and to the sales. They don’t want to wait until the next day … I think some people even skip Thanksgiving meals just to go shopping.”
Ricketts, who arrives at work late morning most days, said on Friday morning she’d never seen the mall so packed so early. Just before 11 a.m., the retail complex was buzzing with post-turkey day shoppers. Teens and parents milled around food vendors, including Hot Dog on a Stick and Cinnabon. Lines wrapped around counters at several stores, including Macy’s and Old Navy, both of which advertised steep door-buster sales.
Nationally, holiday spending is predicted to jump about 10 percent this year over 2015. The National Retail Federation predicts about 59 percent of Americans will hit the stores this weekend. That’s up from last year. About 75 percent of those consumers are predicted to shop on Black Friday alone, while about half are expected to head to the stores today.
Despite those predictions, both Wal-Mart and Target were relatively quiet at about 5 a.m. Friday, though employees at both stores said there’d been long lines Thursday.
Nevertheless, some East Hawaii residents opted to make the traditional early morning door-buster Black Friday trip to Wal-Mart, including 33-year-old Hilo resident Tessie Fontes. Fontes said she learned the hard way several years ago when she ventured out Thanksgiving night and had to wait in a long line at Wal-Mart.
“The line that year was all the way out the road,” she said Friday, minutes after Wal-Mart opened, a 19-inch monitor already in her cart. “So I never came again. I’m not going to be standing in line.”
Waimea resident Ernest Carvalho, 71, agreed.
“A friend of mine said last night this place was packed, and I didn’t want to come,” Carvalho said, munching on an egg sandwich at the Wal-Mart McDonald’s Friday morning. “To me, this is the perfect time to go shopping. You do your shopping before all the crowds come. This is nice.”
“Some of the stuff (in comparison) to the regular price, is kind of unbeatable,” added Pahoa resident Bradley Gantala, 22, also among the cluster of about 20 early morning Wal-Mart shoppers making a beeline straight for the electronics.
For the Keliis, and others who chose to brave the line at Home Depot, employees handed out coffee and an array of donuts. The Keliis — along with others who were first in line — also received steep in-store discounts for use on their morning shopping trip as a reward.
“It’s showing our appreciation,” Home Depot employee Marilynn Lowery said. “It’s our way of saying, ‘Thank you.’”