The I Love Saipan and Ever Blue Black Friday Sale started at 2am but hundreds of people camped on the streets of Garapan hours before the doors opened to guarantee their spot in a long line of customers all wanting to get their hands on discounted accessories and apparel. <\/p>\n
According to store manager Leo Ruluked, last Friday\u2019s sale required months of preparation and countless hours of inventory.
\n\u201cIt takes months of planning. Our buyers work hard to bring in merchandise from abroad to make sure that there is enough inventory for the customers to buy what they want and need,\u201d Ruluked, who has worked with Ever Blue for the past four years, said. \u201cWe have a lot of containers come in that I can\u2019t even count. Inventory is the most important part to this Black Friday.\u201d
\nRuluked shared that the annual Black Friday event was initiated in 2011 and began around 4am. <\/p>\n
One shopper Sylvia Preza said she visited the store in advance to pinpoint the items she will be running to buy when the doors opened early Friday morning.<\/p>\n
Lannie Fernandez, an employee, has worked with Ever Blue for the past four years and described the turnout as \u201cpositive.\u201d Fernandez took her post at the exit door to check the customer\u2019s shopping bags before they left the building. <\/p>\n
\u201cI just grabbed anything I saw,\u201d said shopper Michelle Sablan. \u201cI do not want to do it ever again. This is my first and last time.\u201d
\nAnother shopper literally shopped-till-she-almost-dropped. \u201cI almost fainted,\u201d Shaina Santiago said. Santiago described the scene as she rushed in the store to grab her favorite brands. \u201cThere were people fighting and shoving. I almost tripped and fell. I am happy that I am done.\u201d<\/p>\n
The nine-hour sale was wiped out within the first hours of opening its doors. Dozens of locals enjoyed discounted prizes and continued to scour the island for other Black Friday sales the same morning. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The I Love Saipan and Ever Blue Black Friday Sale started at 2am but hundreds of people camped on the streets of Garapan hours before the doors opened to guarantee their spot in a long line of customers all wanting to get their hands on discounted accessories and apparel. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}