Kerala’s Lulu malls are in a frenzy as large crowds flood the stores for a midnight sale

Lulu International Shopping Mall in Kerala offered midnight bargains in an effort to revive “nightlife shopping,” and it was met with a resounding reception. Now, videos and images of people swarming their stores in Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi have everyone online in a state of shock.

Thousands of people were observed waiting in lines for stores to open at midnight as the group tested its “midnight shopping” preparations with musical performances and entertaining activities. While the original stage had people dancing to live bands, chaos quickly followed.

Shoppers’ videos show a massive rush near the mall’s escalators and lobby, with security attempting to control the mob and customers doing their best to maintain their position in line. People, including little children and the elderly, were spotted enthusiastically grabbing everything up for grabs at much discounted prices while armed with shopping carts and bags.

The mall also posted videos online to pique people’s interest, showing customers virtually crawling into stores to snag their favourite goods before the shutters had fully opened. According to Joy Sadanandan, regional director of the LuLu group, “our main goal is to encourage midnight shopping so that the people may enjoy nightlife with less traffic and buy their daily essentials in a more calm setting.” Sadanandan emphasised that they will introduce it as an experiment and observe what difficulties they encounter when putting a suitable strategy into action to achieve their long-term objective. The future phased implementation of this would be looked upon, he continued. “We will study all of those factors,” he said.

Picture Courtesy: Instagram (KL01)/images are subject to copyright