Report: Black Friday Sales Break Record

Perhaps all those stories of shoppers lined up outside the stores weren’t an exaggeration. Early reports on Saturday indicated retailers may have seen their strongest Black Friday sales ever. ShopperTrak, which counts foot traffic at malls, estimated that sales rose 6.6 percent this year, to $11.4 billion. Last year’s Black Friday sales climbed just 0.3 percent, to $10.7 billion. But ShopperTrak founder Bill Martin warned against getting too excited: “It’s just one day. It remains to be seen whether consumers will sustain this behavior through the holiday shopping season.”