Online sales surge to record-setting $10.8B on Black Friday as stores see thin crowds

Americans let their fingers do the shopping on Black Friday, as online spending soared to a record-setting $10.8 billion.

That haul included a breathtaking $11.3 million spent every minute between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on the day after Thanksgiving, with most shoppers using their phones, not PCs, to hunt down holiday bargains, according to data provided by Adobe Analytics.  

Many of the spend-happy let artificial intelligence help them with their gift list.

Generative AI-powered chat bots had a huge influence on shoppers, Adobe said, with traffic to retail sites from chat bots soaring 1,800% compared to Black Friday last year.

“Crossing the $10 billion mark is a big e-commerce milestone for Black Friday, for a day that in the past was more anchored towards in-store shopping,” Vivek Pandya, lead analyst for Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement. 

“And with consumers getting more comfortable with everything from mobile shopping to chat bots, we have tailwinds that can prop up online growth for Black Friday moving forward.”

Harry Potter Lego sets, Disney Princess dolls and anything “Wicked” topped sales. Shoppers also snatched up makeup, Bluetooth products and smart watches.

Discounts “exceeded expectations,” Adobe said, but even as shoppers searched for reduced prices amid continued concerned about inflation, they also “embraced higher ticket items.”

Manhattan-based Reprise Activewear was one of the beneficiaries of the cybersplurge.

Black Friday was the company’s second-best day of the season so far, said founder Mary Bemis, 33. The site hawks plant-based and nontoxic clothing.

The top sales day was what the company called “Green Friday,” launched last week to make up for the shorter shopping season: just 26 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, against a more leisurely 31 days last year.

“I see people taking advantage of the deals, but I feel like they’re still spending a high amount compared with what our average order is,” said Bemis, 33.

Soho-based Two Blind Brothers — offers customers the chance to “buy blind,” and make a clothing purchase that will surprise them to raise money for the Foundation Fighting Blindness — saw traffic spike 13% in the past week as it offered a 20% discount on purchases, said co-founder Bradford Manning.

While the digital space was packed with shoppers, brick-and-mortar stores failed to draw the huge crowds of days gone by.

The exception was Target, which saw flashback overnight lines at some locations around the country for the launch of its exclusive book devoted to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and a bonus edition of her “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology” album.

Although both became available online Saturday, many locations sold out their supply, the discount retailer said.

But it was a typical shopping day at most other stores, said Marshal Cohen, chief retail adviser at market research firm Circana, who spent the day scouting Long Island shopping centers.

“The spreading out of the holidays has created the lack of need and lack of urgency,” said Cohen, who had a 20-person team monitoring crowds nationwide. “This is going to be a long, slow tedious process” of getting shoppers to buy, he said.

Michael Brown, a partner at management consulting firm Kearney, saw no lines at the Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus, NJ on Thursday.

“It’s not the old Black Friday that we used to know,” he said.

With Post Wires