Black Friday: From doorbusters to family rituals, it's a time to shop and a time to bond

There are Black Friday deal-grabbers, the up-all-night folks who forgo part of Thanksgiving to bring home a ridiculously cheap high-definition TV or a half-price laptop.

There are Black Friday traditionalists, who take a day concocted to fatten retailers’ bottom lines and turn it into a bonding ritual with family and friends.

Then there’s Kaitlyn Hetzel and her crew.

A fun-loving, attention-grabbing bunch, they hit the stores each Black Friday not only early, but in costume. It started with Christmas sweaters. Then came headbands, sunglasses and tights. Last year they paraded around in onesies.

“And this year we decided we’re Santa’s elves,” said Hetzel, a 27-year-old software company employee from Madison who met her two older sisters, her brother and a cousin — all appropriately dressed — at 3:30 a.m. at the Target in Grafton.

Turns out it was closed, but no problem. The elf troop simply marched on to Kohl’s and Meijer, stopped to refuel at Starbucks, and hit Mayfair — hard — about an hour before dawn.

“We just kind of go wild in the mall, to put it bluntly I guess,” Hetzel said. “We just really try to make each other laugh the entire morning.”

And spread a little Black Friday cheer. Kids pointed and called them Santa’s helpers. Some shoppers took their pictures. Others assumed they were employees who could tell them where to find stuff at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

“We really realized,” Hetzel said, “that we loved Black Friday.”

So do tons of Americans. While perhaps not quite as many are turning out as they did before the rise of online shopping and the spreading of deals across the holiday season, Black Friday shoppers still are expected to top 100 million this year. In the Milwaukee area, they were out in force.

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Brookfield Square was bustling by late morning. Around noon, the line to check out at an eight-register station at Kohl’s in Southridge Mall was more than 60 shoppers long. At Mayfair at 3 p.m. (the peak Black Friday traffic hour nationally, according to research firm ShopperTrak) the surface parking lot was packed all the way out to Mayfair Road.

At Northern Tool + Equipment in West Allis, where the average customer is a 53-year-old man and could well be buying for his business, shoppers lined up for the 6 a.m. opening and discounts on things like ratchet tie-downs and rolling tool chests.

“I had guys coming in and buying so much stuff this morning they had to buy a trailer to get it all home,” store manager Justin Lintz said.

The Joann fabrics and crafts store in Greenfield, meanwhile, was jammed with female customers, including Lisa Benedict, 36, of Milwaukee, whose $90 worth of purchases — “some ornaments, some Halloween clearance stuff, all bunch of sorts of different stuff” — filled the storage area of her little red hatchback.

Joann’s Black Friday deals, she said, were “really good. Because up until noon you get an extra 25% off your total purchase, and then it’s 50% off one regular-priced item.”

At least one thorny little problem cropped up: A rollover traffic crash shut down the busy intersection of S. 76th St. and W. Layton Ave. in Greenfield late Friday morning. And with a vehicle hitting an electric pole, some stores in the area, including a Best Buy, lost power for about an hour.

ShopperTrak, which counts actual traffic at tens of thousands of stores, says Black Friday continues to rank as the No. 1 shopping day. At the same time, traffic counts on the big day have fallen — by a bit less than 15% — since 2011.

Meanwhile, the NPD Group Checkout study, which monitors actual sales based on receipts, shows Black Friday average spending online rose last year, while average spending in brick-and-mortar stores fell.

For that, you can look to people such as Tiffany Lange. Shopping Friday morning at The Corners of Brookfield, the 38-year-old mortgage underwriter bought clothing items at Lululemon and Anthropologie. But those were for herself; when she goes Christmas shopping, she’ll do about half of it online — much more than she did just a few years ago.

Why the change?

“People,” Lange said dryly. “I want to stay away from people.”

But for all the hectic deal-hunting, Black Friday has a warm-and-fuzzy side too.

At Southridge, the Salvation Army set up in the center court, with kettles of course, but also with magicians, caricature artists and balloon sculptors — all free, and drawing smiles from both children and adults.

“Wonderful, absolutely wonderful,” said Stephen Gillespie, a Milwaukee-area resident who stopped by with his daughter, Rachael, 10. She particularly liked it when a magician opened his wallet and flames shot up from it.

“We want families just to stop for a moment,” said Faithe Colas, the Salvation Army’s assistant divisional director of development. “The stores are here, they’re open for you all day long. But you can stop for just a moment and engage a little bit with your family.”

And for many people, that’s an important part of the day.

A few years back, Jane Boyd Thomas and Cara Peters, both marketing professors at Winthrop University in South Carolina, interviewed 38 experienced Black Friday shoppers, all of them women, about what they did, how they did it, and why.

In essence, the researchers found, the event was viewed much like a military mission — strategically planned, executed and, after completion, celebrated by groups of family or friends.

And while victory on the retail battlefield is important, Black Friday for these shoppers also is about the personal relationships that are built and solidified as the tradition continues year by year, Thomas said in an interview.

“It’s a ritual that lets you bond,” she said.

So it’s not just about rampant consumerism. Traditional Black Friday excursions, DePaul University marketing professor James Mourey said, satisfy a fundamental human need for social belongingness and connection.

“And,” Thomas said, “you get to shop.”

Rick Wood and Paul Gores of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.