Beating Winter Sales Doldrums : Clerks use slack time to take care of housekeeping duties and catch their breath.
The hordes of holiday shoppers are long gone, and the pace at the Montebello Towne Center is relaxed and easygoing. It’s enough to drive saleswoman Elizabeth Perez up the wall.
“I feel like closing up and taking a nap,” said Perez, who misses the holiday hustle and bustle at her gift shop, Cartoon Junction. “They wouldn’t even notice,” she said of passers-by. “Most people just walk through the mall--they don’t buy anything.”
January and February are traditionally the slowest sales months of the year, as tired consumers recover from December spending sprees. For retail salesclerks, it’s the winter doldrums. Instead of waiting on customers, they find themselves waiting for the next sale, often passing the time by rearranging shelves and or even watching TV on the job.
It is not that salespeople have nothing to do this time of year. Customers do come in, and employees take inventory and make room for new spring fashions. And management tries its best to boost business by holding frequent clearance and white sales, as they will this President’s Day weekend.
But January and February remain laggards, particularly after the early January clearance sales end.
“There is essentially nothing they can do to boost business because of the nature of the beast,” said Kurt Barnard, publisher of Retail Marketing Report. Consumers “have just been through Christmas, and most have done their gift giving. They have bought most of their winter clothing,” and, he said, “people are not quite ready to buy for spring.”
More than 500,000 Los Angeles County residents work in the retail industry, including restaurants, and all to some degree see a slowdown in business, said Jack Kyser, economist for the Greater Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. “Everybody goes into a shell after the holidays,” he said.
The drop-off can be dramatic. During December, 1987, Los Angeles-based Carter Hawley Hale--owner of the Broadway and other department stores--reported sales of $481 million. The following January, sales were $137 million and, that February, $152 million.
Besides the lack of business, retail workers miss the festive air that surrounds the holiday shopping season. “I think I get a charge out of it,” said Ricardo Quinones, manager of the C&R; Clothiers in Monterey Park. “The days go by faster, and the salespeople are happy because they are making money. It’s very motivating.”
“There is a certain rush that you get during Christmastime,” said Elizabeth Burke, spokeswoman for the Glendale Galleria. “You got the decorations up,” she said, and “the crowds mean business.”
‘Natural Letdown’
In contrast, during January, the holiday atmosphere melts away as fast as a Los Angeles snowfall. Malls dismantle decorations and dump wilting poinsettias while retailers dismiss the extra holiday help, cut back hours and take vacations.
“I go from 20 employees at Christmastime to a staff of five,” said one Los Angeles-area Hickory Farms store manager. “There is a natural letdown after the holiday.”
At the Pacific Sunwear store in Montebello, assistant store manager Pat Serio recalls the busy days of December. “When we opened up the store in the morning, there were always people waiting to get in here,” said Serio. Now, Serio and salesperson Andrea Saldivar keep busy marking down prices and moving spring wear to the front of the store and winter apparel to the back.
“They tell us to ‘sell, sell, sell,’ ” said Serio of company managers. “But there is nobody to sell to.”
At a children’s apparel store in Glendale, a saleswoman sneaked in a portable television set to pass the time, and her high school-age co-workers finished up homework. “It gives you some breathing room,” she said of the slow period. “But then it starts to get monotonous. People just come to window shop.”
With fewer customers around, store employees devote more time to housekeeping.
At a Los Angeles-area May Co. department store, a salesman in the men’s department said: “We spend 20% of the time selling. The rest of time is spent stocking. We’re almost out of everything.”
Roxie Coumoutso, a saleswoman at Nordstrom in Glendale, said: “There are tons of clothes I have to mark down and there is dusting and waxing to do . . . real fun stuff.”
Enjoy Friendly Mood
Although the slow pace is to be expected, many store employees fret about the lack of sales. “You kind of feel you are missing something,” said Art Taylor, floor manager at Music Plus in Pasadena. “You worry if you should’ve had a sale last week.”
“When it is so slow,” said Perez in Montebello, “you feel you are not doing you’re job.”
But if salespeople miss the throngs of Christmas shoppers, they enjoy the relaxed nature and friendly mood of the consumers during the off season. “After the holidays, the customers want to do something for themselves,” said Dolores Ramirez, manager of the Merele Norman cosmetics shop in Montebello. “They are not in a rush.”
“Customers will actually talk to the staff,” said Taylor at Music Plus. Christmas shoppers, on the other hand, “usually are really ornery,” he said, “and they don’t want to be bothered.”
Despite the wild seesaw in retail sales from December to January, some retail workers would not have it any other way.
If sales were spread evenly during the year, said Quinones at C&R;, “I think employees would get kind of complacent and it would get very boring. Maybe the way retail works is a blessing in disguise.”
