Black Friday kick-started the Christmas shopping period today as consumers flocked to stores in person and online to bag the best deals. It's one of the biggest shopping events of the year, with discounts across retailers big and small, running through to Cyber Monday (November 28).
This annual America tradition notoriously evokes pandemonium across the pond, but Wales is not immune to some queues. There have been chaotic scenes in Cardiff on Black Friday in the past - including the infamous scuffles in a Tesco store in 2014, which the police were called to.
This year, Black Friday coincided with Wales' clash with Iran at the World Cup. You might have thought our heart-breaking loss would have dampened the Black Friday frenzy in the capital. But when we popped into the city centre at around lunchtime, the opposite seemed to be true.
Read more: 'Gridlocked' roads in parts of Cardiff due to Black Friday traffic - live
St David's Shopping Centre and the city centre streets were bustling with thousands of shoppers and fizzing with activity. Nearly all stores proudly proclaimed their deals in their window panes, and we spotted discounts up to a reported 60%. Customers darted in and out of shops, armed with shopping bags.
Starting in ground floor of the St David's shopping centre, the first queue we spotted was at Pandora. This had spilled out from the entrance into the main thoroughfare and appeared to snake right through to the opposite end of the store. The queue itself was the most orderly we spotted - customers inched forward patiently through the store and a member of staff who was keeping the queue in check chatted with them as they waited.
Making our way through the rest of the ground floor, though there were not any more queues that made it past the entrance, virtually every shop was buzzing with customers. Long-standing retailers, like Size? (which offered up to 50% off), Foot Asylum, Sports Direct, Footlocker, Menkind, and Beauty Studio (which had up to 60% off its products), and The Fragrance Shop, had many customers customers, but relatively newer stores, like Typo (30% off across the whole store), also enjoyed the Black Friday fever.
But there were some stores on the ground floor that seemed markedly emptier when we visited - notably, big names like Kurt Geiger, Fossil, Office, and Dune, as well as the recently-launched Mallows Beauty, despite offering up to 40% off.
On the upper floor, our findings were similar. While again there were no queues trailing all the way out of stores, big brands like Bershka, Stradivarius, Zara, Claire's, H&M, Apple, Morphe, Mac and Schuh were lively with shoppers make a beeline for their deals.
While when we visited Victoria's Secret was also enjoying lots of customers, its competitor Bravissimo further down the thoroughfare appeared to be virtually empty. Surprisingly, there were only a handful of shoppers in Paperchase, despite its store-wide three-for-two deal, and there were no shoppers in Ecco when we walked past.
Outside St David's, the streets were also teeming with visitors - even Queen Street, which has in recent times become a rundown and atrophying retail giant.
Though the street today is used increasingly used as a way to get from one side of the city to the next, it was good to see many shops on it benefitting from Black Friday. Unsurprisingly, Lush was thronging with customers - but also, in a heartening sight, HMV, which was bought of administration in 2019, was also full of shoppers.
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