Tatum Rathell, a Hawaii Kai resident, thought there was a special event Friday night at Ala Moana Center when she saw a large line of customers waiting outside of the Victoria’s Secret store.

“I was all excited to check it out, but then I found out it was due to a power outage. I don’t know how many stores were affected at Ala Moana Center, but it really came at an inopportune time when the mall was packed,” Rathell said. “This is crunch time for me and a lot of other shoppers.”

Rathell returned to Ala Moana Center on Saturday to check out the deals at the Disney Store with her husband, Brian, and 2-year-old daughter, Avery, in tow. The store was packed Saturday, which may help make up for Friday’s power outage, and contribute to what so far had looked to be a stronger local holiday shopping season than last year.

“Holiday shopping had looked better this year than last,” said Tina Yamaki, president of Retail Merchants of Hawaii, an organization that represents a couple of thousand brick-and-mortar stores across Hawaii. “Holiday crunch time wasn’t the best time for outages to happen.”

The National Retail Federation reports that November is still the biggest holiday shopping month nationwide, but more than 30 percent of shoppers will wait until December to begin making holiday purchases, with 27 percent of them starting holiday shopping during the first two weeks of December.

Based on holiday traffic patterns, some local retailers may experience lost sales from holiday shoppers and diners impacted by Friday’s blackout and two others earlier in the week, Yamaki said.

“There’s no bright side to a power outage on the middle-of-the-month payday 10 days before Christmas,” said Sam Shenkus, vice president and director of marketing for Royal Hawaiian Center, which wasn’t affected by the outage. “Some of those shoppers and diners probably won’t be back.”

Friday’s blackout lasted from 6:19 p.m. to 8:19 p.m. and affected some 432 customers, including Ala Moana Center, the Hawai‘i Convention Center and Victoria Ward Center, said Hawaiian Electric Co. spokeswoman Shannon Tangonan. Friday’s outage was due to a HECO equipment failure and was unrelated to two other outages earlier in the week, she said.

On Thursday, Tangonan said, a trip caused five customers along Kapiolani Boulevard and Waimanu and Keeaumoku streets to lose power from about 6:40 p.m. to 7:07 p.m. An outage also occurred Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. when an underground crew was repairing damage left from a drilling job done by contractors with the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, she said.

“There was a trip and a contractor was extracting water from a manhole when a flashover occurred — that’s when a short-circuit is made through the air,” Tangonan said.

At least 300 residential and commercial customers, which may have included Ala Moana Center, the Hawai‘i Convention Center, and residential towers like Pacifica and Koolani, were affected before power was restored at 4:12 p.m., she said.

“It’s really just unfortunate that these occurred so close together and during a very busy time,” Tangonan said.

Teri Orton, general manager of the Hawai‘i Convention Center, said the facility lost power Thursday for about an hour and for a longer period Friday during the Hawaii National Guard Birthday Ball, which was attended by 1,300, including Gov. David Ige.

“Fortunately, the lights went out Friday after we had finished cooking for the banquet. We were able to serve dinner, but we had about an hour and 45 minutes of ‘romantic mood’ lighting,” Orton said. “We also had to push the client’s program back about a half-hour because even with our emergency generator we didn’t have enough power for the band or the audio-visuals.”

While Friday was a stressful evening for Orton, she said she was grateful when she saw what happened at Ala Moana Center as well as the Consolidated Theatres Ward 16 movie complex, which had to deal with hundreds of disappointed people who were there to watch the much-anticipated “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.”

“It’s so important that we don’t have any more disruptions,” Orton said. “We’ve been on the phone with HECO. We’ve got holiday parties coming up every single day. The holidays are a very busy time.”