Shoppers, Returners Jam Stores : On the Day After, It’s Madness on the Malls

Just after the 8 a.m. opening Friday, more than 100 frenzied shoppers--some toting plastic trash bags to haul their loot--made a beeline for the Bullock’s Christmas shop at Mission Valley Shopping Center in San Diego. They soon were stripping half-price wrap, cards and decorations off the shelves.

At the Broadway in Century City, early birds were lured by the gimmick of free fortune cookies, some of which contained gift certificates. They raced up escalators to the third-floor holiday shop, perching patiently on piles of Dhurrie and Oriental rugs or leaning against housewares counters as they queued up to pay for Yuletide bargains.

Meanwhile, at Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza, dozens of shoppers were lined up at store entrances by 7:30 a.m., well before most of the stores opened.

“It’s madness, it really is,” said Barbara Fineman of Lakewood, who waited with her husband and two sons for dressing rooms at Nordstrom’s men’s department in South Coast Plaza. Fineman held off shopping for Hanukkah, which started Friday night, “because we knew there’d be the day-after-Christmas sale.”

Throughout Southern California, sunny weather, a four-day weekend, post-Christmas markdowns and a late Hanukkah combined to brighten the picture for the area’s malls, which had been nervously eyeing mediocre sales until the days just before Christmas. And across the nation, particularly in the Midwest and East, many retailers reported brisk post-Christmas traffic as shoppers foraged for cut-rate items or returned ill-fitting gifts.

Although some shoppers said crowds seemed sparser than in past years, the sound of cash registers bolstered merchants’ spirits after what was generally acknowledged to be a cliff-hanging shopping season that produced lackluster results for many stores.

And regardless of their sales gains, many retailers are poised to pull out strong profits this year because they have maintained better control of inventories and thus will not be forced to liquidate leftover goods at rock-bottom prices. Two years ago, for example, many retailers reported lower-than-expected earnings for the fourth quarter and year because of sharp price discounting in December, 1984, and January, 1985.

This season, “the last 10 to 12 days were very busy, (with) the big kick” coming in the last few days, said Bill Dombrowski, a spokesman for Carter Hawley Hale Stores. The Los Angeles-based company has department and specialty stores throughout the country.

Its Broadway unit in Southern California expects sales in December to be 7% ahead of last year, and believes that will look good compared to the gains at many other retailers. Although many shoppers noted that the Broadway seems constantly to have merchandise on “one-day sales,” Dombrowski said the company as a whole was “very pleased at how the promotional environment was less intense this year.”

Nationwide, merchants said they experienced a “good, not great” Christmas, with a lot of business coming at the 11th hour.

“It started out with a bang around Thanksgiving and then dropped off to ‘soft’ days,” said Sally Sargent of Bloomingdale’s in New York. “Then they did rev up again so that we had a lot of last-minute shopping.”

“Customers really decided to spend some money the last week,” said Paul Coulter, operations manager at Fashion Island in Newport Beach, which on Friday was enjoying some of the biggest crowds of the year. “Up until then, they were holding off until the markdowns started.”

Gayle Kantro of the Beverly Center in West Los Angeles said the mall’s business peaked on Tuesday, a day later than last year. “We’re so busy,” she said Friday, noting that the mall, not usually known for early rising customers, was crowded by lunchtime.

Marshall Field & Co.’s 27 stores had the biggest day in the chain’s history last Saturday, then watched the record topple on Monday. “We did experience some incredible, frantic shopping,” spokesman Doug Dome said. “Wednesday at 5 p.m. was probably the busiest the store had been over the holiday season.”

Drawn by a gigantic sale on furs Friday, crowds lined up outside Marshall Field’s flagship store on Chicago’s State Street before the opening. After all, shoppers anticipating changes in the tax code have only a few days left to take advantage of sales-tax deductions on big purchases.

Elsewhere in the store, however, Dome said bargain hunters might have been disappointed. “Consumers that came out this afternoon didn’t find the traditional price cuts,” he said. “The retailers are trying to educate the consumers to shop early, to reestablish more regular-price business.”

Overall, he added, “Christmas was fantastic for Marshall Field,” with double-digit sales gains that exceeded expectations. He described business in Chicago as phenomenal and activity in Texas, where the chain has four stores, as “good.”

Ross Stores, an off-price apparel merchant, did not fare so well in Texas. “We had a nice pickup throughout the whole chain, with the exception of the Energy Belt--Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado,” said Richard Oppenheimer, senior vice president and chief financial officer. The chain’s strongest business was in fragrance, scarfs and leather accessories and plush toys.

In Houston, hard hit by the slump in oil prices, the city’s largest Foley’s department store, at Sharpstown Center, reported slower-than-usual post-Christmas shopping. “We have our annual-half-price sale on all of our Christmas merchandise, and it’s real slow. It surprised me,” manager Kathy Knott said.

Toy stores in the Dallas area suffered through a miserably slow day. “We don’t have a shopper in the store,” said John Royster, manager of a local Toys R Us store. “Naturally, today is mostly for returns. It wouldn’t compare to the days before Christmas.”

In newspaper and radio advertising on Christmas and the day after, many retailers vowed that shoppers exchanging gifts would not have to face Scrooge at the return counter. Bullock’s in Century City was doing a brisk, no-questions-asked returns business at 8:30 a.m. for those wanting cash back.

At the Northridge Fashion Center, Lonnie Perez of Arleta returned a sweat suit she got from her sister, who apparently forgot that Perez had recently lost 25 pounds. “She should have known better,” Perez said.

In Orange County, post-holiday shoppers kept Fashion Island’s 5,600 parking spaces almost filled throughout the day. Spokesman Coulter noted that “a lot of people are very price conscious,” doing most of their shopping at stores offering major discounts.

Business also was reported brisk Friday morning at the City Shopping Center in Orange, the Brea Mall and the Laguna Hills Mall.

But, as has become the norm in Orange County, nobody reported more business than South Coast Plaza, where 13,500 parking spaces were barely enough to keep up with demand.

By 7:30, shoppers stood outside both Bullock’s and the Broadway, eager for bargains on Christmas wrapping and cards. “They were all asking, ‘Where’s the wrap? Where’s the wrap?’ ” Bullock’s manager Sue Graham said.

In the Detroit suburb of Troy, Mich., Don Pyden, resident manager of Oakland Mall, said that pre-Christmas sales were up 8% over last year’s and that he expected Friday’s receipts to follow suit.

“It’s extremely busy,” he said. “You would think it was the day before Christmas rather than the day after.”

Mary Martinez, a saleswoman at the K mart in Grosse Pointe, said the pre-Christmas half-price sale had been such a success that there was not a lot of leftover merchandise for shoppers Friday. But the store was crowded with people returning gifts. “I’ve been doing returns all day,” she said. “It seems like everyone returned everything they got.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Daniel Akst in the San Fernando Valley, Mary Ann Galante in Orange County, Greg Johnson in San Diego and Stephanie Droll in Detroit.