Dec. 4—TRAVERSE CITY — The name shopping days have ended.

Now it's just about the goods.

If some of the early projections and visual results are any indication, the shopping season for Christmas 2022 seems to be up from the previous year, both in terms of the number of customers as well as money spent.

The 2022 holiday shopping season began with Black Friday the day after Thanksgiving, even through some of the big deals from retailers began sooner than Nov. 25 and are lasting longer.

Rachel VanThomme, the manager of Poppy Things in Suttons Bay, said Nov. 25 was so busy at the 326 N. St. Joseph St. store, that she has to call in additional support. VanThomme said she waited until mid-afternoon before she had to text her boss to come in, despite Chelsey Skowronski being out on maternity leave.

"I felt so bad," said VanThomme, who said she didn't leave the register from 9:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. that day. "I put it off as long as I could."

VanThomme said "a perfect storm" of conditions may have led to Poppy Things — which sells women's clothing, home decor and jewelry — being in demand on Black Friday. She said some of the rush may have had something to do with customers who were unable to make the store's third anniversary party on Nov. 19, when the region was blanketed with snow.

Throw in outstanding weather for the final weekend in November and the tradition of the start of the holiday shopping season and customers were aplenty.

"They came in on Black Friday to make up for it," said VanThomme, who said the busy Black Friday yieled a "record-breaking day" at the store.

Weather may have also been a factor in a busy Black Friday at Toy Harbor in downtown Traverse City. Store owner Amanda Walton said the turnout Nov. 25-26 was comparable with 2021.

"Black Friday was definitely a great shopping day for us," she said of the 221 E. Front St. store. "The weather was awesome Friday and Saturday. There was a lot of people out shopping and wanting to support small businesses."

Walton said Small Business Saturday usually out-performs Black Friday at the Toy Harbor register, but that was not the case in 2022.

Walton said the reversal may have had a little to do with the undefeated football game between rivals University of Michigan and Ohio State at noon.

Walton, who has a family connection to U-M, tuned in to the game herself on the computer while at work on Saturday.

Add Traverse City St. Francis playing in the Division 7 high school championship the morning of Nov. 26 and there may have been less people out in the downtown streets Saturday.

The National Retail Foundation reported 196.7 million consumers shopped over the long weekend in 2022, about 17 million more than the previous year. The NRF.com report also said "more than 122.7 million people visited bricks-and-mortar stores over the weekend, up 17% from 2021."

The NRF report started some 72.9 million U.S. consumers hit stores on Black Friday with another 63.4 million visiting stores on Nov. 26. In 2021, Black Friday customers totaled 66.5 million on Black Friday and another 51 mullion the following day.

While in-store shopping was up, so were online sales.

Adobe Analytics reported consumers spent $11.3 billion on Cyber Monday, a 5.8% increase from 2021. Jordan Lindberg, the vice president at eFulfillment Service in Traverse City, saw the same thing locally.

"We were busy," Lindberg said. "Our shipping activities were up. We had a full crew working and we're working 10 hour days. I guess it's good news for the economy."

Located at 807 Airport Access Road, eFulfillment knows a few things about online shopping. Company Marketing Manager Rachel North said eFulfillment has 50,000 different products in its warehouse with 4 million items on its shelves at any one time. The company will ship more than 1 million different orders this year totaling 5 million items.

During this time of the year, eFulfillment Services doubles its production team from 15 to 30 people, a total increase of about 15 percent. Cyber Week also is when eFulfillment Services handles twice the volume of a normal week.

"It's a four-day thing," Lindberg said. "Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday are pretty jazzed up sales days. Black Friday through Cyber Monday we definitely saw a spike this year."

While 2022 is showing an increase in online shopping, it won't reach the 2020 record year set at not only eFulfillment Services, but the entire e-commerce industry. Lindberg said shoppers returned to brick-and-mortar stores for the 2021 holiday season and are continuing on that path.

"We were all buying everything online (in 2020)," North said. "In 2021 that softened. This year people are back shopping in stores, so online is not as crazy as things have been. But we're having our best year from our metrics."

"It's too early to tell," Lindberg said. "We're less than a week into it. But early indications are that things are up."

Increased online revenue this year may also be driven in part by increased prices due to inflation.

Cyber Monday online spending was driven by toys. Adobe Analytics reported a 684% online growth Nov. 28 compared to an average day in October led by. Other areas of strong demand included sporting goods (466%), appliances (458%), books (439%), jewelry (410%), electronics (391%) and computers (372%).

But even stores like Poppy Things were seeing an increase in online sales in 2022.

"I'm still packaging orders from Cyber Monday," VanThomme said Wednesday afternoon.