Holiday Sales Bearable for Small Stores : This Year’s Hot Items Are Scarce at Big Retailers

Cabbage Patch Kids they’re not, but Oskar and Teddy performed admirably this Christmas--under the circumstances.

Oskar is a compact food processor made by Sunbeam. Teddy Ruxpin, produced by Worlds of Wonder in Fremont, Calif., is a talking bear with a microchip inside. In both cases, unexpectedly large demand caught the manufacturers short-handed, and they’re trying to appease a clamoring public by flying in the items as fast as they leave overseas production lines.

At big retailers, the scarcity of these two big sellers has injected an element of drama into an otherwise ho-hum Christmas season.

But the mood at Southern California’s smaller boutiques and specialty stores, meantime, is decidedly more ho-ho-ho. Customers have been snapping up an array of gifts from traditional to trendy, with emphasis on the modest and unusual.

“We’re probably having the best sweater year ever,” said Scott Tull, manager of Brooks Bros. in downtown Los Angeles. “It’s a classic Christmas season, with emphasis on good-investment clothing.” Even so, the button-down clothier’s biggest seller so far is an $11 walnut tie rack.

The Beverly Hills branch of Abercrombie & Fitch, an upscale sporting goods and apparel retailer, finds that people “are looking for unusual things to give as gifts,” according to manager Jim Pratt. Popular items include a champagne bottle filled with cork-shaped chocolates ($35; or $80 for a magnum) and a $95 “duck shoot,” consisting of a play shotgun with rubber-tipped darts used to knock cardboard fowl off their perches.

The store has sold out of handmade leather foot rests and benches in the shapes of rhinos, hippos and lions. At $250 to $2,000, Pratt said, they “would look wonderful in a heavy wood library with a brass lamp hanging from the ceiling.”

At the Eddie Bauer store in Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza, foot traffic has been “consistently strong” since the first of November, compared to last year’s “peaks and valleys,” manager Bob Power said. “The last couple of weeks were real screamers.” As a result, the store has run out of such basics as its canvas firewood carrier. Other strong sellers were the Mini-Mag Light, a six-inch flashlight at $15.50, and White Wings, a group of 15 paper airplanes, for $12. A seasonal note: When customers saw red at Eddie Bauer, they bought it--on flannel shirts, Swiss army knives and ski jackets.

Skiers loaded up on clothing and accessories at West Ridge Mountaineering in West Los Angeles, which recently has been averaging a healthy $2,000 a day in clothing sales. “People want to look good and be warm,” said manager Mark Brekke. Heated ski boots, a new $295 item in limited supply this year, “have been accepted quite well.”

Plunket Keys, a Hollywood clothing boutique catering to the entertainment set, has been “chockablock with customers,” many of them buying gift certificates for custom-made evening wear, according to manager Matthew Foden. Actress Patti D’Arbanville, longtime companion of “Miami Vice” star Don Johnson, bought a certificate, as did “Falcon Crest” star Simon MacCorkindale for his wife, actress Susan George.

Pasadena florist Jacob Maarse has sold more than 3,200 poinsettias, 20% more than last year. They did especially well because other traditional holiday plants, such as paperwhite narcissus, hyacinths and tulips, didn’t survive cold weather in the North. In addition, “one gift that sold really well was nutcrackers from Germany in all sizes and shapes,” Maarse said. A suggestion for that friend who has everything: a 6-foot-tall nutcracker at $2,500.

A sure-fire winner this season has been James Michener’s latest novel, “Texas.” Vroman’s, a Pasadena bookstore, has sold more than 500 copies. Also moving briskly, according to general manager Edward Fitzpatrick, are “Lake Wobegon Days,” by Garrison Keillor, the folksy host of public radio’s “Prairie Home Companion,” and “Perfect Gifts,” a book about famous people and the gifts they’ve given to other famous people.

Some consumer electronics products are selling out as fast as retailers put them on the shelves. Richard Brown, manager of the Circuit City store in Torrance, reports a boom in video camcorders, portable equipment that can be used to videotape and play back Johnny’s first steps and Susie’s first Little League game. They sell for $1,200 to $1,700.

Gamut of Gadgets

The Sharper Image, a mail-order business that also operates 13 retail outlets, is selling a gamut of gadgets--from miniature pool tables to robots to oak file cabinets. Jim Boike, manager of the Los Angeles store, also has had success with a “little pocket motorcycle” that goes 30 miles an hour and can be folded to fit into a car trunk. It’s by Dandy and costs $695. Another strong item is Petster, a microchip-equipped, stuffed cat that purrs and moves in response to hand clapping. One advantage over the real thing: There’s no cat box to change, just batteries.

Still, the feline is playing second fiddle to Teddy Ruxpin, the product of Worlds of Wonder, a company less than a year old that was unprepared for its success.

“We’re chartering 747s to pick up bears from the Far East,” said Paul Rago, vice president of marketing. During the Christmas season, the company expects retailers to sell 750,000 of the bears at prices from $59 to $99. Rago said one 65-year-old grandmother wrote to the company, pleading for help in locating a bear after she was knocked down by a crowd rushing into a store that had just received a shipment.

Thomas Etchells, assistant manager of the K mart store in Temple City, said the store was unable to get any Teddy Ruxpins. “Just about everybody who came to the front door wanted one of those,” he sighed.

The store also was sent only a fraction of the Cabbage Patch dolls that it ordered. (Although still going strong, the Coleco toys aren’t the phenomenon of last year, when $540 million in dolls and accessories were sold. And stores such as the Broadway in Beverly Center still have ample supplies of the Trivial Pursuit board game, which is expected to sell only 7 million copies this year, compared to 22 million last year.)

Sunbeam is scurrying to capitalize on the seven-pound Oskar’s unexpected popularity, especially with people who already own a larger food processor. “We are air-shipping a million pounds of Oskars,” said James J. Connors, president of Chicago-based Sunbeam Appliance. Well over 500,000 of the French-made Oskars have sold for between $55 and $79, and 400,000 more are on back order.

Shoppers will find the competition for gifts far less intense at Gregg Motors Rolls-Royce of Beverly Hills. The dealership usually sells between eight and 15 of the luxury cars each December and is “on schedule” this year, according to sales representative Armen Shaghzo. Some lucky corporate officer has secured for himself one of 10 stretch limousines the British manufacturer shipped to the United States this year. The cost of this yuletide indulgence: $200,000.