Shoppers queue from 2am for bargains in post-Christmas sales
Shoppers arrived at some stores from as early as 2am on Boxing Day to hunt for bargains in the post-Christmas sales.
Shoppers arrived at some stores from as early as 2am on Boxing Day to hunt for bargains in the post-Christmas sales.
Stores in some of Scotland's largest shopping centres flung open their doors early in the hope of attracting early-bird consumers.
Despite the bad weather, many outlets reported a buoyant day's trading and said items such as fashion and footwear were flying off the shelves, as were items being bought with gift cards.
Bosses at Fort Kinnaird in Edinburgh said more than 60,000 shoppers were expected through its doors, with the earliest visitors arriving at 2am to queue for the Next sale.
The intu Braehead shopping centre, near Glasgow, also reported early queues.
General manager Gary Turnbull said: The early birds certainly caught the best of the bargains at intu Braehead on Boxing Day.
Shoppers were driving into our free car parks at 4am and queuing up for two hours outside the Next store, waiting for it to open at 6am.
And by the time Next did open, there was a queue of around 400 people along the outside of the centre.
JD Sports was another store that opened at 6am, before the other stores started trading at 8am.
As the day went on, the centre became even busier with shoppers and we had extra staff on duty to keep traffic flowing.''
Glasgow Fort said shoppers arrived there from as early as 3am.
Phil Goodman, centre manager, said: The Boxing Day sales are a festive tradition for many groups of families and friends and we have certainly seen that with people enjoying a day out treating themselves to some bargains before enjoying a meal.''
Shoppers at Silverburn took advantage of discounts of up to 50% at the Glasgow shopping centre.
It said footfall figures showed it had welcomed 5% more shoppers compared with last year, with mixed fashion and footwear performing well.
David Pierotti, general manager, said: Boxing Day is always one of our busiest days of the year and we were delighted to welcome over 60,000 shoppers hoping to bag a bargain on the official start of the post-Christmas sales, with queues from 4am.''
In Aberdeen, thousands of shoppers descended on Union Square in search of reduced electronics, fashion and homeware, with the most extreme bargain hunters queuing from 6am to be the first in line for discounts.
Manager Ryan Manson said: Boxing Day is renowned for being the most popular sales day of the year, and this year was no different as Scots have evidently seen Boxing Day as a great opportunity to get their hands on a bargain and burn off all that turkey from yesterday as we've seen at Union Square today.''
Ian McLelland, centre director at EK, East Kilbride, said there had been a constant stream of shoppers'' throughout the day.
It looks like gift cards were a popular Christmas present this year with lots of shoppers using the cards to pick up some bargains in the sales,'' he added.