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Black Friday 2017: A Run on Sneakers in L.A., and a Frenzy Online
By THE NEW YORK TIMESUPDATED 4:11 PM
Sneaker shoppers were lined up outside Cool Kicks on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles well before it opened Friday. Ivan Kashinsky for The New York Times
The unofficial start of the holiday shopping season was this week, when many national retailers opened their doors and offered major sales. Now it’s Black Friday, traditionally the big day of the week. We’re capturing what it looks and feels like at American shopping malls, retailers and discount stores.
Here, you’ll also find:
• Shopping deals from The Wirecutter, a product review and recommendation site owned by The New York Times.
• Sneaker sales drew lines in Los Angeles; in Dallas, there were few early crowds to battle.
• History and facts about Black Friday. (Did you know it started in Philadelphia in the 1960s?)
Outside Cool Kicks, a group of friends who resell hot sneakers waited for the store to open. Many of those in line were planning to resell their purchases. Ivan Kashinsky for The New York Times
Sneakers worth waiting for.
In front of Cool Kicks, a sneaker boutique on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, Jonathan Lindsey reclined in a lawn chair, hoodie drawn snug over a custom fitted cap. About 100 people waited in a line behind him, stretching around the corner.
Mr. Lindsey, 28, said there were around 15 people ahead of him when he arrived at 9 p.m. Thursday — 12 hours before the store would open. But he paid $60 dollars to move up to second. Like most of the people near the front of the line, he was here not for personal shopping, but for business.
So the Gray Zebra Yeezy Boosts he was there to buy would never grace Mr. Lindsey’s feet. Instead, he had sold the pair in advance to a woman who had driven by earlier in a Mercedes, offering him $550 dollars for a pair that would cost him $320.
“She had her son on FaceTime,” Mr. Lindsey recalled. “She’s like, ‘His birthday is tomorrow, and he wants the shoes.’ They’re sold. Baby boy’s birthday. They’re sold.”
Though patrons would be limited to buying just one pair each — with some pairs marked down to just a dollar, only one of the first 15 people in line at Cool Kicks was planning on keeping his purchase. The rest — mostly teenagers, and all male but one — would be immediately relisting their new rare sneakers on the secondary market, where some pairs fetch more than $1,000. — LOUIS KEENE
Not a good day for ‘Our Website Is Down.’
Friday is on track to become perhaps the busiest day in history for online shopping, according to salesforce.com, which makes it a spectacularly bad time for a retailer’s website to go on the fritz.