Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

The term Black Fri­day has tra­di­tion­al­ly con­jured up im­ages of black cats and su­per­sti­tion and bad luck if the 13th day of a month falls on a Fri­day.

How­ev­er, the term ‘Black Fri­day’ has al­so come to mean ex­treme good luck for con­sumers, as the Fri­day af­ter Thanks­giv­ing in the US has evolved in­to a glob­al shop­ping event, of­fer­ing mas­sive dis­counts and deals.

The an­nu­al event has been tak­ing T&T by storm for the last ten years, and lo­cal busi­ness­es have ful­ly em­braced it, of­fer­ing deals that have shop­pers swarm­ing malls and on­line stores. 

Through­out the day yes­ter­day, many videos sur­faced on so­cial me­dia that showed huge lines out­side well-known busi­ness­es, sig­ni­fy­ing how big of an event it is. 

Shop­pers raced to grab the best bar­gains of the year and take ad­van­tage of the Black Fri­day sales that oc­curred yes­ter­day. From as ear­ly as 3 am, shop­pers pushed and stum­bled on each oth­er to get a head start on the mas­sive sales and dis­counts of­fered.

Busi­ness­es such as Courts, Stan­dard Dis­trib­u­tors, PriceS­mart and Massy Stores stepped up their game this year, of­fer­ing many deals to cus­tomers. Yes­ter­day Guardian Me­dia spoke to the mar­ket­ing man­ag­er at Stan­dard, Aabi­da Al­la­ham, where she ex­plained the bar­gains that the com­pa­ny was of­fer­ing.

“This week­end, we are end­ing it all with the big bang dol­lar hunt where we placed se­lect­ed one-dol­lar tags on sev­er­al items through­out the store and cus­tomers could come in and pur­chase that be­tween the hours of four to five,” she said.

Al­la­ham said for the day, hun­dreds of tele­vi­sions were sold and dou­ble the amount of mi­ni ap­pli­ances and home decor items. 

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke with sev­er­al shop­pers to find out how they felt about the Black Fri­day sales. One man shared his rea­son for shop­ping on that day. 

“You come out. You en­joy your­self with the rea­son­able prices, and you shop around for not on­ly your­self but for your friends and fam­i­ly as well,” he said. 

An­oth­er cus­tomer said it was im­por­tant to ar­rive ear­ly be­cause there would be a high chance of be­ing stuck in traf­fic and miss­ing out on all the deals.

He said, “Ac­tu­al­ly, I left a lit­tle late this morn­ing be­cause of traf­fic. I usu­al­ly am ear­li­er than this, but I left a lit­tle late to­day, so I know some of the good bar­gains have gone al­ready. But I will still see what I can get.” 

At Courts, the Black Fri­day sales be­gan on No­vem­ber 22 with dis­counts of up to 80 per cent on sev­er­al items. 

PriceS­mart al­so be­gan their sales ear­ly, with many deals through­out the week, adding a twist to it and call­ing the event SmartWeek. Fast food restau­rants al­so took part, of­fer­ing mul­ti­ple bar­gains.