On Friday, Nov. 23rd, consumers around the nation flooded into stores in search of the best steals and deals.

West students were among thousands of shoppers and described Black Friday as hectic and crowded.

“Everybody ran to get door-busters, everybody was running. I ran first to get to Macy’s, some people were running down the escalators in Macy’s, by the time I got there everything was gone,” sophomore Manal Ali said.

Although Black Friday sales traditionally begin on the day following Thanksgiving, this year several retail outlets such as Macy’s, Kohl’s and Best Buy opened their doors on 5 pm Thanksgiving day, giving holiday shoppers a head start on catching hot deals of the season.

Senior Sofia Stefanis, who went to Woodfield mall, believes Black Friday is a great opportunity for retail outlets to clean inventory.

“I went to Woodfield on Friday at 6:00 am, it wasn’t as busy, but it started getting crowded later,” Stefanis said. “Black Friday was originally a day for people to call off of work the day after Thanksgiving, but I also think it’s become a marketing thing for Christmas, but it’s also a good opportunity for companies to get rid of excess inventory.”

According to figures from MasterCard, Black Friday sales this year totaled 23 billion dollars, a 9% increase from last years sales.

Furthermore, online advertising and buy-online-pick-up-in-stores options by retailers such as Target and Walmart pulled in 6.22 million in online sales. Meanwhile smartphones brought in more than 2 billion dollars in sales, a 4.4% increase in online mobile devices purchased compared to Black Friday 2017.

Besides mobile devices, TVs and makeup were among other popular consumer grabs.

“TV’s are always a product people purchase on Black Friday, a lot of people were also going into make up stores because they had good deals,” Stefanis said.

Although online shopping is becoming an increasingly popular method of holiday shopping to avoid large crowds, students like Misbah Ali prefer in-store shopping.

“We stood in line for 30 minutes to get door busters and Macy’s opened at 5 pm, people brought boxes and they were emptying shelves. I think that’s proof that online shopping will never overtake in store sales; it’s really popular,” Ali said.