CYPRUS: Thousands of bargain hunters flood the shops on Black Friday

Thousands of Cyprus consumers looking for a bargain queued up outside shopping malls and stores from the early hours to take advantage of Black Friday sales.

Malls around the island saw one of their busiest retail days, with some reports talking of chaos prevailing in shops.

My Mall Limassol’s Head of Operations Katia Panayi told Stockwatch that consumers were lining outside the stores from as early as 7.30am, with the first stores opening at 8am.

“According to indications so far, both visits and sales will be higher than those of last year’s Black Friday,” said Panayi.

She said at lunchtime some 15,000 people had walked through the doors of My Mall Limassol, 10% more than last year.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Mall of Cyprus Kypros Hadjistyllis told Stockwatch that the day started very well with sales at a higher level than last year.

"There is a lot of interest in electronics," he added.

Marios Antoniou, the General secretary of the Cyprus Association of Retail Trade Enterprises said that traffic is at very high levels.

"We estimate that both traffic and turnover will exceed the levels of the same day last year."

Antoniou said that consumers had been queuing outside stores from early in the morning, forcing some stores to open earlier.

He said that consumers were mainly interested in large TVs.

Black Friday started in the USA in 1952 and marks the beginning of the festive season.

It took its name from the business accounting records, as on Black Friday, records were showing a profit (written in black) as opposed to the damage of previous days (noted in red).

The custom is a fairly recent addition to the Cyprus shopping experience.