Hundreds of holiday shoppers braved cold temperatures and a heavy rain, some all night long, waiting for Utah retailers to open their doors early Friday morning.
Qiyu Zheng of West Jordan began standing in line at 9 p.m. Thursday at the Best Buy electronics store at 261 W. 2100 South, waiting for the chance to purchase a $500 laptop computer that regularly sells for $900.
By 5 a.m., Best Buy's parking lot was full, and a line of more than 1,000 people had wrapped its way around the building, heading south on 300 West.
Other local stores saw similar lines and bulging parking lots as they prepared to welcome hordes of bargain-seekers. ShopKo stores opened at 5 a.m. and offered shoppers free coffee and cookies, and Mervyn's had a 5:30 a.m. opening, offering a free Santa ornament for its first 700 guests.
Target stores set a 6 a.m. opening, as did Toys R Us, which was pushing everything from video games to My Little Pony toys.
Elyssa Rognon of Bountiful took her place in line at Best Buy at 11 p.m. Thursday. For Rognon, the day-after-Thanksgiving rush is an annual ritual. This year she came with her boyfriend. Together, the couple waited to purchase CDs selling for $6.99.
"We parked our van right up on the sidewalk, and we sat in there for like four hours," Rognon said. "We watched TV all night and played Monopoly."
Others, like Jacob Stokes of Centerville, pitched a tent.
"It was a lot warmer than out here," Stokes said. "Didn't get much sleeping. It rained quite a bit."
Jeff Havemann, sales manager for Best Buy, said doorbusters such as computers selling for $200 and digital cameras at $150 brought out the crowds.
"We've been preparing since July," Havemann said. "We're expecting at least a 7 to 8 percent increase in sales. We still get customers coming into our store for the first time."
By 6 a.m., the store's 75 employees were in position, ready for the charge. A steady stream of shoppers entered the building for nearly 15 minutes. Moments later, a new line formed, this time winding its way to the check-out registers.
Brian Tervort of Magna and Jeremy Davis of Kearns were the first to make their purchases, each buying MP3 players selling for $30 each.
"We stayed up all night," Davis said. "It was way worth it."
U.S. households this year are expected to spend an average of $476 on gifts during the holiday season, up from last year's estimate of $455, according to a survey by the Conference Board.
Jay McIntosh, Americas director of retail and consumer products for Ernst & Young, said consumer electronic items are a hotly contested category for big-box retailers. Other major holiday categories expected to do well this year include apparel, jewelry and sporting goods.
McIntosh predicts a 6 percent rise in U.S. retail sales in November and December compared to the same period last year.
Driving much of this year's increased spending are affluent shoppers. In addition, increased sales at home improvement centers and online purchases are pushing sales.
Internet sales likely will see a 15 percent to 20 percent increase.
"More than half of the homes that have Internet access now have high-speed access, and that makes shopping online so much more efficient," McIntosh said. "Web sites are much easier to navigate."
And if credit card spending is an indication, this year's sales are sure to bring a smile to many retailers.
During the third week of November, spending by consumers and businesses on Visa branded payment cards totaled more than $23.1 billion, an 18.8 percent increase over the same week in 2003, according to Visa's Holiday SpendTrak report.
While Best Buy counts the Friday after Thanksgiving as one of its busiest shopping days, the National Retail Federation places the Saturday before Christmas as the busiest shopping day of the year.
"It's not the day after Thanksgiving anymore," said McIntosh, who added that in the last two years sales on so-called "Black Friday" have been a counter indicator for overall holiday sales.
"Last year sales the day after Thanksgiving were very poor and holiday sales overall were good," McIntosh said, "and the opposite happened two years ago."
Although many look forward to the after-Thanksgiving shopping specials, Adbusters Media Foundation, based in Vancouver, Wash., was encouraging people to use Friday as a "buy nothing" day.
"Our take with the day is things are out of control," said Tim Walker, a spokesman for the foundation. "This is supposed to be a holiday where we celebrate all the things we cherish, and basically it's been hijacked by the corporations and this idea that our freedom boils down to consumption."
E-mail: danderton@desnews.com