LOS ANGELES/CHICAGO/NORTH BERGEN – Young Taylor Swift fans and their parents lined up outside some of Target’s nearly 2,000 stores in America early on Nov 29 – Black Friday – to buy copies of her new Eras Tour book and vinyl album.

Hoping to buck a long stretch of slowing sales at Target stores – with penny-pinched shoppers making purchases at rival retailers – the big-box chain teamed up with American superstar Swift to build on the fan momentum she experienced following her Eras Tour concerts.

Several customers queued up outside Target stores as early as 5am in freezing temperatures, with most of them there to snap up Swift merchandise, before the stores opened at 6am.

“Yeah, it’s really cold, but we’re here to get Taylor Swift’s tour book and her latest vinyl drop,” Swift fan Carlos Miracle, 31, said while waiting outside a Chicago store.

Parents of teenage daughters and youngsters in their late 20s were up and about to buy Swift’s Eras Tour book priced at US$39.99 (S$53.60) at Target.

The retailer is also making available a vinyl and CD version of Swift’s latest album The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology for the first time, containing 35 tracks including four acoustic bonus songs.

The vinyl version is being sold for US$59.99 and CDs for US$17.99, according to Target’s website.

In Los Angeles, accountant Landon McCall said: “I originally came for the vinyl, and I saw the book there too.”

A Target store employee “was, like, ‘Hey, this is going to go by fast. It’s what everyone’s wanting. I already sold 30 this morning within the first 30 minutes,’” said the 31-year-old. “So, I was like, I might as well just get both … My daughter likes Taylor Swift too, so I thought it’d be something for her and her mum to kind of, like, go through the book and look at it together.”

Swift, 34, has been setting music industry milestones and boosting local economies with The Eras Tour, with the last leg of the concert happening in Canada currently, a phenomenon that some economists have termed “Swiftflation”.

Swift had released her latest Tortured Poets album in May during Target’s first quarter, boosting its sales in its entertainment category by a high-single-digit percentage.

On Nov 29, Ms Julia Corrin, a 39-year-old from Pittsburgh, bought the Eras Tour book. The tour was a “really special moment … and it’ll be great to have something to remember it by”, she said.

In New Jersey, 28-year-old Amy Webb was in line to get her hands on the new Eras Tour book. “I usually don’t buy anything during the holiday season, but wanted to get my hands on this before it sells out,” she said.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, users shared images of long queues to grab Swift merchandise, while some noted that a few Target stores saw nearly empty shelves for the Eras Tour book and were out of Tortured Poets vinyl by 9.30am.

To boost sales during the holiday season, which is shorter than in previous years with only 26 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Target will offer the Eras Tour items on its app and website beginning on Nov 30.

“That’s the only reason I am here, we don’t want to go online and see that it is sold (out),” said a 35-year-old Marriott Hotel employee Adrian Antuna, who was waiting to get his hands on the Eras Tour book and a couple of vinyl albums. REUTERS