Frenzied crowds fail to surface on Black Friday

Frenzied throngs of Black Friday shoppers largely failed to surface on Long Island amid growing buying online and doorbuster sales on Thanksgiving Day that muted what is traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year.

At Best Buy in Baldwin, where the store was open from 5 p.m. Thursday to 1 a.m. Friday, lines reached upward of 400 shoppers for several hours. By contrast, buyers began lining up only 15 minutes before Friday morning's opening at 8.

"We had people camping out in front of the store starting three days ago" for Thursday's opening, said Anthony DeMarco, Best Buy's general manager.

DeMarco said the trend toward opening retail stores on Thanksgiving has sapped the Black Friday crowds.

Still, at some stores, hot deals attracted packs of shoppers. The checkout line at Kohl's in Bay Shore was 60 people deep Friday afternoon and snaked through half the clothing section. At the Banana Republic store at Tanger Outlets in Riverhead, shoppers waiting for a cashier stretched through half the store, and store general manager Diane Douglas and her staff were busy replenishing stock.

"Gray Thursday" is indeed "cannibalizing" Black Friday sales, but other factors also worked to limit spending, said Chris Christopher Jr., director of consumer economics at IHS Global Insight. He said retailers began discounting earlier in the month this year, and about 10 million fewer Americans had a payday on Black Friday than on the 2013 shopping day.

Marshal Cohen, retail analyst at The NPD Group in Port Washington, said store openings on Thanksgiving would pull retail revenue from Friday and Saturday.

"We don't have more money in our pockets, even though stores are open more hours," he said.

Some avoided Black Friday crowds by shopping online, another factor cited by IHS in keeping the mania in check. As of 3 p.m. Friday, IBM reported, Black Friday U.S. online sales rose 8 percent versus a year earlier, and mobile devices accounted for more than a quarter of online sales.

For some, Friday offered the opportunity to perform feats of extreme shopping.

About 3 p.m., Diane Jacobs of Queens and three members of her family were figuring out how to fit themselves and more than 50 shopping bags with merchandise worth about $3,000 into a Jeep Cherokee at Tanger Outlets in Riverhead.

At the P.C. Richard store in Rockville Centre Friday morning, Sag Dehaarte of Brooklyn spoke of his annual marathon.

He started shopping at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Walmart in Hempstead. Dehaarte then swung by Best Buy and The Home Depot. After P.C. Richard, he planned to check out a Lowe's in Brooklyn before wrapping up his journey at Modell's. Having bought four TVs already, he said he's a "lunatic" when it comes to Black Friday.

"This is my day," he said.

Aside from popular flat-panel TVs, shoppers were seeking marked-down perfumes and clothing at Saks Fifth Avenue at Walt Whitman Shops in Huntington Station and puffer vests, scarves, gloves and velour jumpsuits at New York & Company at Tanger in Riverhead, store officials said.

Sarah Cooper, 29, toted an empty suitcase from England to fill with gifts during a visit to her mother on Long Island.

At Kohl's in Bay Shore, her cart overflowed with toys and a princess dress from the movie "Frozen" for her 18-month-old daughter, Lily.

Newlywed Jennifer Flynn, 25, of Port Jefferson Station was shopping at the Target store in Riverhead for gifts for her husband's family.

She was happy about scoring Beats headphones -- a hot item this year -- for $97 for her 13-year-old sister-in-law. She also had a funky pink chair, Nerf Mega Bow and other toys in her shopping cart.

"The best part of Black Friday is randomly finding things that make great gifts and are also on sale," she said.

The National Retail Federation forecasts a year-over-year 4.1 percent holiday sales increase to $616.9 billion for November and December, with the average person spending $804.42, up almost 5 percent from last year's $767.27.

Online sales, which are included in the prediction, are forecast to grow 8 percent to 11 percent over last holiday season, to as much as $105 billion. With Victor Ocasio,

Jo Napolitano

and James T. Madore