The lure of shopping bargains the day after Thanksgiving drew many area residents into stores offering discounted doorbuster sale prices.
The shopping epicenter around midnight was at Tanger Outlet Center, where seven Gonzales Police Department officers directed streams of traffic coming on Interstate 10 Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and on Hwy. 30.
“Traffic was backed up on the Interstate almost to Prairieville,” Police Chief Bill Landry said. “Hwy. 30 was backed up to Purpera & Sons Lumber and Building Materials.”
Tanger general manager Jeanne St. Jermain said the line into Tanger was back up as far as she could see at midnight, but moving consistently.
“Parking was at capacity at 12:30 a.m.,” she said. “We had people parking across the highway at the hotel and Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
Landry said there were no incidents reported during the shopping extravaganza, “not even a parking lot accident.”
The outlet center gave away free vitamin water samples at midnight and Starbucks coffee at 6 a.m.
St. Jermain said Tanger extended the savings offers over the three-day weekend this year for the first time. These included Night Owl savings on Friday and Saturday evenings from 5 p.m. to closing. Sunday featured an “After Thanksgiving Big Outlet Sale” all day long.
According to St. Jermain, some of the stores offered different sales to start the big weekend. The new Banana Republic store offered everything in the store at 50 percent off the entire weekend.
The idea this year was to have enough different sales at different times to make it worthwhile for shoppers to make multiple trips to the outlet center, she said.
At the Gonzales K-Mart Manager Joe Doyle said Black Friday drew at great deal of foot traffic into his store.
“It certainly was a successful day for us,” he said. “We are the only retailer in town doing lay-away, so there is a big demand for that.”
The “sleeper” success sales story at K-mart was a six-foot folding table that “people were buying four, five and six at a time,” Doyle said.
Nintendo Wii consoles were the hottest item of the day, he said. “We offered a lot of deeply discounted electronic items that sold well.”
