Seacoast NH Super Shoppers Share Best Black Friday Buying Strategies


There are people for whom Black Friday might as well be Black Plague.

And then there is Danielle Rouleau.

“My only rule for Black Friday is if you can still see out the back window, you’re not done,” said the 42-year-old mother-of-two from Farmington. “I’m going until I can’t see anymore.”

Rouleau was first introduced to the extreme shopping experience by her husband, Robert.

“Now he says he’s never coming back with me again because I’m going crazy,” she said. “It’s my favorite vacation besides Christmas morning. ”

She even has a shirt labeled “Black Friday Queen” coming out for the event.

With many stores abandoning the tradition of being open on Thanksgiving Day and offering deals online, Black Friday shopping has changed. But die-hard Black Friday shoppers on the Seacoast say they still love the original in-person experience.

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Patty Gallo, from Chester, earned a reputation as a Black Friday super consumer when she worked for Core Physicians in Exeter and shopped for their Operation Santa program. This year, her husband is accompanying her for the first time.

“He says he can’t wait to be there,” said Gallo. “We’ll see at 2 am if he’s ready to go. ”

Sarah Mantegari, from Brentwood, follows a slew of Black Friday insider websites and creates a spreadsheet to track her transport, which she updates as items ordered online arrive.

“I always strive to be better at this,” Mantegari said. “I always like good deals in general. When I was growing up my mom always cut coupons and taught me not to pay full price if you didn’t have to.

Black Friday will be a family affair this year for Shannon Bissonnette of Dover, whose mother comes from Alabama to shop with her. “Many years ago, I was actually teaching coupon classes and showing people how to create coupons,” Bissonnette said. “On Black Friday, you can save a lot of money if you do it right. It was really my goal, to save as much money as possible that day.

The thrill of the affair

Danielle Rouleau says her Black Friday shopping isn't over until she's stacked enough bags in her car so she can't see through the back window.

One thing all local Black Friday shoppers share is the fun of finding a good deal and saving money for their holiday shopping.

For Gallo, the search for offers made it possible to purchase more gifts for the Core Physicians families adopted as part of their Operation Santa program. “I would be out all night and have fun, but there was always a plan,” said Gallo. “I used to take the logs and go through them all, make a big list, see what I could get and what I could get for free. ”

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Some places, like Kohl’s, return money for every purchase made and Gallo will return with those funds to complete his first shopping tour. “I love the thrill of making a deal. I always say to everyone, ‘Never pay a high price for anything,’ ”said Gallo. “I love doing it and the kids love what I bring to them.”

Rouleau studies all the prices before embarking on Black Friday.

“I only buy deals, so I know the majority of the prices at Target and I know they have things that aren’t really a deal for Black Friday,” Rouleau said. “I always said I had to be a professional buyer; people actually pay me if they want a certain item and they don’t want to fight the crowd; I’ve done it on printers, I’ve done it on televisions.

Mantegari has switched to more online shopping for Black Friday in recent years, first through bfads.net, which is now inactive. “There were people working there who would somehow infiltrate the companies and get copies of ads before they were published,” she said. “You kind of felt like an insider. ”

This site has moved to Rakuten, where she is able to list and compare prices across multiple store websites to find the best deals. “IPads aren’t really on sale, but let’s say I want this iPad because it has a $ 40 gift card in it, so you can hang it there,” she said. “It’s a game, it’s fun to play.”

Friendship

Some friends line up for concert tickets, while others line up in the Black Friday queues. Rouleau remembers the year she stood in line outside Target with a good friend who was pregnant at the time. They both wanted a big screen TV, and the store was supposed to open at 4 a.m. “We stood in line at 9:30 am on Thanksgiving night. It was cold, it was raining, the weather was ridiculous, we were number two in the line, ”she said.

Danielle Rouleau says her husband refuses to shop with her on Black Friday because

As they stood in line, they realized that Toys “R” Us was opening at midnight. Her friend left, went to Toys “R” Us, bought their two lists, and came back at 2am with food from McDonald’s.

“When Target opened at 4 in the morning, we rushed, grabbed carts, rushed to the televisions. We ended up having televisions and other things that weren’t on our list, ”she said.

The excitement of the experience is part of what drives her to do it year after year. “The adrenaline rush of shopping until I fall because that’s basically what I do,” Rouleau said of what she loves. “You get the adrenaline rush; I have anxiety standing in line because I have another store to visit, and I have things on my list.

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Mantegari said her mindset has changed over the years regarding Thanksgiving outings as employees are asked to work on a public holiday. But she went to Toys “R” Us at midnight when her kids were little. “It’s not the Christmas spirit, but when you have young children you try to make it a happy season for them and all of that stuff continues,” she said.

Bissonnette appreciated the social aspect of waiting for stores to open on Black Friday. “We were going to get coffee and we stood in the Best Buy queue to get the TV, it’s dark and you’re frozen, and you meet all these people in line and where they’re from and what they do, ”she said. said, adding that they also exchange tips. “I like this.”

But there are limits to what they will endure to make this incredible deal. “When my daughter was about 3 years old it was the Cabbage Patch doll era and people stomped on each other for dolls, I never did that,” Gallo said. “I would just go away, this is for a kid, he won’t die if he didn’t have that particular toy that year; I wasn’t that crazy.


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