It is 5 p.m. on a Friday night. A mother, her daughter and her niece have arrived at their sleeping place for the night. 

Armed with blankets, the three shoppers spent the 50-degree November night on the ground at The Domain. These were not desperate circumstances. They chose to sleep outside that night to wait in line for the opening of a new clothing store, H&M, that would not occur for another 19 hours.

Cousins Marisa Guevara, 15, and Briana Hernandez, 16, from Pflugerville, Texas were the first of 1,100 people in line when the doors opened to H&M on Nov. 17.

For being first in line, Guevara and Hernandez received t-shirts, wallets and $75 gift cards to the inexpensive Swedish clothing store.

“We came for the style,” Hernandez said.

This is H&M’s fourth location in Texas. There are currently two in Dallas at and one in Houston. Recently, a third store was announced to be opened in Dallas. H&M began in 1947 by Erling Persson and now has 2,700 stores in more than 40 countries, according to the website.

The U.S. is H&M’s second largest market, behind only Germany. The H&M company plans to open stores in Bulgaria, Latvia, Malaysia, Mexico and via franchise in Thailand in the coming years.

According to Nicole Christie, the spokesperson for H&M U.S., the new store opening in Austin is “quite an accomplishment.”

Christie, who has worked for the company for 12 years, was very optimistic about the Austin location’s achievements.

“We consider Austin a fashion market,” Christie said. “We think it’s going to be a very successful store.”

The wide selection of the H&M brand is Christie’s main praise.

“We have everything,” she said. “We have clothes for ladies, men, teens and kids. It’s a family store.”

Female shoppers could find opening offers at $10 for blouses. Colorful sweaters could be bought at just $24.95 each and shoes for as low as $12.95. Upstairs in the men’s section, sweatshirts were sold for just $12.95.

“If you want to buy something that you think is current, you don’t have to spend a bunch of money on it,” Brandon Fried, 24, said.

Fried is a long-time fan of H&M and although he got there three hours early, was not one of the first 500 and therefore did not get any prizes.

“Of course we heard about the giveaways and tried to make it but … we barely got there,” Fried said. “They’re going to have good deals today and we waited in this long of a line, might as well keep waiting.”

According to Fried, waiting in line became tense at times.

“We’ve had a couple people try to cut in front of us in line,” Fried said. “I just said ’You know we’ve all been waiting here for hours.’”

Not all of these line-cutters responded well.

“Someone called me a bitch,” Fried said. “I’m not ashamed though … they always walk away.”

Once finally inside, shoppers found themselves in a sea of people in the two-story store with a 700-person capacity. It was like bumper cars trying to weave in between people and employees and clothing racks and accessory tables.

The chaos of the opening was a turn-off for some shoppers.

“It was good, just overwhelming,” Asha Nelluvelil, 21, said. “It got to the point where it was just get something and get out.”