Crowds turn out for early Black Friday shopping

Long Island shoppers turned out in greater numbers this year for the abundant midnight and early morning Black Friday sales and spent more while they were out, according to managers' and retail analysts' estimates.

Tanger Outlet Center in Riverhead saw a crowd of about 27,000 overnight, "an all-time record for us," said general manager and marketing director Janine Nebons. She said that by 6 a.m., two-thirds of the stores reported they were doing more business this year than last.

"Long Islanders know how to respond to a sale," she said.

At the Roosevelt Field mall in East Garden City, parking lots were at 80 percent capacity at 5 a.m. in contrast to last year, when it took until 10 a.m. to get that full, said Kathleen Herrmann, area director of marketing at Roosevelt Field and the Mall at The Source in Westbury. Shoppers there were ready at midnight, when 19 mall shops were scheduled to open. Seeing the crowds, 26 more stores decided to follow suit, Herrmann said.

"The only reason those shops opened [at midnight] is because people were here and ready to spend," she said.

Attendance was up at Walt Whitman Mall in South Huntington, said mall marketing director Nancy Gilbert. It distributed 3,000 sales fliers by 11 a.m. - quicker than in past years - and Gilbert said parking lots filled up more quickly, too.

This year retailers were focused on matching each other and, as in the case of Roosevelt Field mall merchants, recognized that they could use competitors' foot traffic to their advantage, said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst for The NPD Group, a Port Washington research firm. He said the percentage of shoppers his company observed who bought items on average rose to 77 percent from 62 percent for Long Island retailers.

"This was about parlaying everyone else's momentum," Cohen said. " . . . They recognized that if one store is busy, shoppers could come to them to wait for it to subside."

A key: staying focused

The staggered store openings allowed Jeanne Walsh, 46, of Plainview, to successfully execute her meticulously planned shopping strategy and score the Madden NFL 11 video game for the Xbox for $30 less than the asking price of most retailers. She found it at the Best Buy in Huntington Station.

The key is planning and a sane attitude, she said, adding, "I'm not going to tackle a lady for an item."

Nationally, the early bird traffic in stores was double and there were more early bird deals, said Britt Beemer, chairman and chief executive of America's Research Group, a Charleston, S.C., market research firm.

As usual, the shoppers who joined the lines on Thanksgiving Day said they did so for a variety of reasons. Some saw it as a chance to have fun and nab a good deal.

Others said Black Friday shopping was a tradition, and still others said they thought retailers would give consumers their best deals of the season on Friday.

Worth waking up for

At the Westbury Best Buy, Brenda Wright, 41, a home health aide from Westbury, was first in line on Thanksgiving morning with her son and friends to make sure her son would be able to purchase a desktop computer package.

"If the economy wasn't so messed up, we wouldn't be waiting out here in the rain," said Wright, noting her work hours have been cut "tremendously."

While the discounts weren't as deep as last year, analysts and shoppers said there were more sales on more products. And 40 percent to 50 percent off was good enough to get out of bed.

Consumers have a pent-up desire to shop, said James Sanicola, co-owner of RenaMarie Jewelers, a Long Island family business that debuted this month in Bay Shore's Westfield South Shore Shopping Center. That pent-up demand helped him open a third store this year in Massapequa and boost sales by 20 percent.

"They've been holding back for too long, two years in a row," Sanicola said. "I think the end of this weekend is going to really kick off this entire season."

With Andrew Smith, Ellen Yan and correspondents Courtney Allison and Zeke Miller