Photo by Haylee Bazil/Staff Photographer.On November 28, pictured left to right, Atalya Brown, Gail Brown and 18 month old Ryleigh Harkless shop the Black Friday deals at Gordmans located in the Village at Cumberland Park.

1. Black Friday weekend slows down as allure fades
2. Sales for holiday shopping season comes down to the wire

Suzan Wilson held a list in her hand as she strolled through Gordmans in the new Village at Cumberland Park on Friday morning.

Armed with a rundown of her 10 grandchildren’s clothing sizes, the Bullard resident set out to finish all of her holiday shopping in one day with her husband David “Santa Paw Paw” at her side. He was festively attired in a Santa T-shirt.

Gordmans was the first stop on the agenda, followed by Kohl’s, J.C. Penny and Bealls.

Mrs. Wilson said she had woken up at 5 a.m. for a good deal in Christmases past before she figured out the Black Friday secret.

“We waited till after 11,” she said. “That’s the secret.”

Mrs. Wilson said this year they weren’t fighting the crazy morning crowds and expected to have a fairly relaxed day shopping.

Nationally, Black Friday seemed a little less crazy this year.

There were squabbles here and there, and elbows got thrown, but the Friday morning crowds appeared smaller than usual and less frenzied, in part because many Americans took advantage of stores’ earlier opening hours to do their shopping on Thanksgiving Day.

That might be hard to stomach for people worried about commercial encroachment on Thanksgiving. But it is good news for bargain-hunters who hate crowds.

Whether it’s good news for retailers remains to be seen. Sales estimates for the start of the holiday shopping season will start trickling out later in the weekend.

Stores such as Wal-Mart and Target reported brisk Thanksgiving crowds. The colossal Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, said it drew 100,000 people between 5 p.m. Thursday and 1 a.m. Friday, nearly what it draws over a typical full day.

On Friday, plenty of shoppers were out, but it wasn’t elbow-to-elbow, said Moody’s analyst Michael Zucchero, at a mall in northern Connecticut.

“Traffic seems a little light,” he said. “Stores being open last night takes away some of the early birds.”

A few aisles over from the Wilsons in Gordmans, Sherry Ray and her mother walked up and down the aisles looking for inspiration on what to give a family member for her upcoming birthday on Sunday.

Ms. Ray picked up a small massager as a potential gift, joking that its recipient doesn’t get out of the house much.

“She sits too much, she’s gonna need the blood flow,” Ms. Ray joked.

Friday was the first Black Friday for the newly constructed Village at Cumberland Park.

The parking lot was full as shoppers visited the roughly 20 open stores.

David Wilson, president of Connected Development Services, said the developers hadn’t seen sales figures as of Friday afternoon, but expected the day went well.

“We are happy with the activity we have from a leasing standpoint,” he said. “It’s kind of building them as fast as we can, building the faces and getting them opened up as quickly as we can.”

Across the nation, there were only scattered reports of shopper scuffles and arrests. In addition, protests were planned nationwide over minimum-wage laws and the grand jury decision in Ferguson, Missouri. Tyler police did not report any major issues.

Protesters interrupted holiday shopping at major stores around St. Louis to vent their anger over the decision not to indict the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown.

About two dozen people chanted “No justice, no peace, no racist police!” and “No more Black Friday!” after police moved them out of a Walmart in Manchester, a St. Louis suburb.

In Chicago, about 200 people demonstrated in a plaza near the historic water tower along Michigan Avenue, calling on people to boycott Black Friday shopping to show their solidarity with protesters in Ferguson.

Other disruptions: Best Buy’s website went down on Friday morning for about an hour. Spokesman Jeff Shelman said “a concentrated spike in mobile traffic” prompted the company to temporarily shut down the site. Online monitoring firm Dynatrace said Cabela’s, Foot Locker and J.C. Penney also had website problems.

Online shopping, especially on phones and tablets, may be siphoning off some shoppers from the malls.

IBM, which tracks online sales, said they rose 6.4 percent compared with Black Friday last year, with much-increased shopping on mobile devices.

In the stores, Toys R Us and Target executives said shoppers seem to be buying more than just the doorbusters and are filling their carts with items not on sale. That’s a sign that lower gas prices and an improving job picture are making shoppers more confident about opening their wallets.

At clothing stores, discounts were steep, with Old Navy offering up to half off everything. Best Buy offered $100 off some iPads. Target slashed prices on TVs and video game consoles.

Last year, sales on Black Friday slumped 13.2 percent to $9.74 billion, according to ShopperTrak, which tracks data at more than 70,000 stores globally. Bill Martin, co-founder of ShopperTrak, said it is unclear how stores will fare this year.

Retailers have turned to Thanksgiving openings to stay competitive and avoid losing sales that have shifted earlier into the holiday, said Ramesh Swarmy, a retail partner at the Deloitte consulting firm.

The holiday weekend still sets the tone for the shopping season, whose sales this year are expected to rise 4.1 percent to $611.9 billion. That would be the biggest increase since 2011. Black Friday has been the biggest shopping day of the year since 2005.

Brian Cornell, who became Target’s CEO in August and was at a Target store in New York’s East Harlem neighborhood Friday morning, said shopping traditions have changed.

“It’s been more of a week event,” he said.