MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WBTW)- According to the National Retail Federation an estimated 135.8 million shoppers or 58.7% definitely will or may shop on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and/or Sunday.
In Myrtle Beach, customers started camping out on Monday to ensure they were first in line for the deals. Some of the campers say they’ve been doing this more than a decade and it’s worth it.
“I mean I have to work two weeks to get 600 bucks and if I’m saving that much, it means two less weeks that I have to work, so, absolutely worth it,” Guy Joseph II said.
Joseph and two others have been camping out at Best Buy since Monday. They’re waiting to take advantage of TV and laptop deals.
“To go the distance be here early. I mean a lot of people come Thanksgiving morning and last year a lot of people got here about thanksgiving because we weren’t that busy but over the previous years. It’s been packed and wrapped around the whole building and coming to the beginning of the line,” Richard Worcester said.
It’s not their first year camping out, so the cold weather didn’t deter them from their plans.
“It’s been not too bad because we got sleeping bags, and warm jackets, so we dressed warm,” Worcester said.
But being in line is just half the battle in getting the items they want this year.
“So we know exactly where it is, we go to those areas and we hop in the line and getting in the line is the longest part. It’ll probably be like an hour and a half two hours just waiting to get to a cashier,” Dean said.
Best Buy will open its doors on Thursday at 5:00pm and managers say they expect more than 1,000 people in just the first hour.
“It’s all about identifying how to process a thousand people or so in a short period of time with a hundred or so employees. So you start mapping out the store and then we have dry run meetings to try to run through how it’s going to go to try to make it as easy as possible,” General Manager Stan Kilp said.
The store will have security and Myrtle Beach Police Officers present and managers ask for patience as there will be about 120 employees in to manage the crowds.
