‘Tis the Season to Shop, but It’s Off to Slow Start : Retailing: Shoppers flocked to stores on the traditional first day of Christmas shopping. But sales in the Southland were called disappointing.
America pushed aside the turkey and trimmings Friday and instead nibbled on the Christmas merchandise in the nation’s shopping malls.
Although thousands of shoppers flocked to the stores, many retailers and consumers found the turnout--and appetite for buying--surprisingly light for a day that often is the busiest of the Christmas shopping season.
“It’s a quiet start,” said Leonard Barron, a salesman at the J. R. Jonathan’s shoe store in the Sherman Oaks Galleria, at midday.
Mona Rad, manager of the Petite Sophisticate women’s clothing store in the Glendale Galleria, said: “Before, money was no object. Now they (shoppers) are watching what they’re spending.”
The disappointing sales at many stores throughout the Southland and the rest of the nation squared with the predictions of a number of retail industry experts. Among other things, analysts have said that shoppers may be getting worried about signs of a softening economy and bored with the merchandise retailers are offering this year. After seven years of economic recovery, experts say, many consumers already have nearly have their fill of fancy merchandise.
Several shoppers at the University Towne Centre mall in San Diego, where the economy is heavily influenced by military spending, expressed concern over proposed defense budget cuts.
Paul Fisher, who works for defense contractor McDonnell Douglas in San Diego, said: “We’ll spend pretty much as we always do, although we may stay within our budget more. We won’t be as extravagant.”
Bus driver Joe Anderson, shopping at San Diego’s downtown Horton Plaza, said he is cutting back on his Christmas spending. “The rent’s going up, the gas and electricity rates are going up. Things are much too expensive here.”
Anderson said he is going to offer his children a choice between a Christmas present and “a crisp $10 bill.”
His prediction: “They’ll take the bill.”
Despite those gloomy sentiments, four San Diego shopping malls--Horton Plaza, La Jolla Village Towne Centre, University Towne Centre and Fashion Valley--each reported their parking lots filled to capacity with shoppers by noon Friday.
Cindy Gonya, La Jolla Village Square marketing director, said shoppers were drawn to her 60-store mall by more merchandise sales than she has seen in past years, including a storewide May Co. sale.
“This is the best day of the year to get bargains on Christmas merchandise,” Gonya said Friday. “You have sales you won’t see the rest of the season.”
However, Terry Norton, a contractor from Burbank, may be typical of a problem retailers may be facing. Taking a break from shopping at the Glendale Galleria, Norton said he expects to spend about 15% less than last year on gifts for his friends and family.
“The spirit just doesn’t seem to be here,” Norton said.
His family’s Christmas is “going to be nice but it’s going to be less. I’m not going to buy the big-ticket items.”
“All year, it’s sale, sale, sale,” Norton added. “Who wants to go to another sale?”
All the same, the retailers generating the most enthusiasm among customers seemed to be relying heavily on sharp markdowns--a practice that once was limited mainly to the days immediately after Christmas.
Two shoppers at Limited Express in Santa Ana--Pat Almeida of Santa Ana and her daughter, Kristi Bowin--found discounts of 40% on merchandise with prices already slashed in half. “We bought five pieces--a skirt, a jumper, a top, a coat-sweater, a pair of pants--and three sets of earrings--all for $117,” Bowin said. “Everything was on sale.”
Those specialty shops with genuine bargains, in fact, seemed to find no shortage of customers. At l.a.Eyeworks at South Coast Plaza, customers began lining up at 8:30 a.m.--30 minutes before the eyeglass store opened--to take advantage of the annual sale that brought discounts as high as 70% and eyeglass frames for as little as $10.
For the most part, however, the shopping at South Coast and the other top Orange County malls, Newport Center/Fashion Island and Westminster Mall, reported they didn’t get really busy until late in the morning.
In some of the less-successful malls in the immediate Los Angeles area, the going was particularly slow for the day after Thanksgiving.
At the Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw mall, plenty of empty tables were available in the food court at noon. The biggest crowd was at the line to take pictures with the mall’s Santa Claus.
Some of those in line said they didn’t intend to do much shopping, but that they had the day off and it seemed the best time to get pictures of their children with Santa.
The Fox Hills Mall in Culver City was so quiet in the morning that you could slide Santa down any aisle in the three-story plaza and not clip too many shoppers on the tote bag. Regardless of the “SALE” signs that bristled in most stores, the watchword at the recently renovated mall was “quiet.”
Service at the mall was unintentionally good, particularly at the small shops strung between anchor stores May Co., The Broadway and J.C. Penney.
At 11 a.m., four clerks circled a single shopper at Kay Jewelers. See’s Candies: two workers, no shoppers. Personal Touch: two workers, one shopper. Sunglass Hut: two clerks, one shopper. The Gap: seven clerks, 15 shoppers.
“It’s empty, very empty,” said Michelle Adams of Los Angeles, a regular Fox Hills shopper. Adams clutched an armful of shopping bags as she wandered through the quiet mall. “I’ve been shopping since September, while I have the money. I’m here today because May Co. is having a big sale.”
Aside from trying to attract shoppers with price cuts, retailers also tried to provide some extra conveniences. Target stores, for example, opened at 7 a.m. and many others began business at 8 a.m.
Cathy Hulac of Sherman Oaks was one of the early birds. By 6:45 a.m., Hulac already was posted in front of the Woodland Hills Target store waiting for the glass doors to slide open so she could get a jump on the traditional day-after-Thanksgiving crush of shoppers. She was surprised that the crush never came.
“We went right up to the checkout stand” without waiting, Hulac said, after finishing about 2 1/4 hours of shopping. “It was amazing.”
At Santa Anita Fashion Park in Arcadia, parents who were tired of dragging their children around took advantage of a high-tech child-care service. Hand-held beepers were passed out to parents who dropped off their kids at “Camp Rainbow”--a spacious, enclosed room on the second floor of the mall filled with stuffed toys and plastic building blocks.
“If the child has an, uh, accident, we’re not allowed to change them, so we beep the moms,” said Pat Rivadeneyra, supervisor of the baby-sitting service.
Even if the overall trend appeared to be one of disappointing sales for retailers, there were some hot spots.
By 9 a.m., the big Houston Galleria shopping mall was packed. At the Omni, a downtown shopping mall in Miami with mostly business and tourist customers, Jordan Marsh’s general manager, Joe Mazloom, reported that “business has been very good. People seem to be shopping much earlier this year.”
There were even signs of hope for retailers in the San Francisco Bay area, where merchants expressed optimism that the Christmas season would revive sales that have been sluggish since the Oct. 17 earthquake.
Near the epicenter of the temblor in Santa Cruz, retailers whose shops were destroyed in the quake opened for business in hastily erected tents near the downtown Pacific Garden Mall.
In Manhattan, throngs of eager shoppers moved more quickly on foot than the city’s cabs and buses, caught in the gridlocked start of New York’s annual Christmas season rush. With nearly five inches of Thanksgiving snow, the first on that holiday in over half a century, there was no shortage of people in the Christmas shopping spirit.
Times staff writers Chris Kraul in San Diego; Patrice Apodaca, Maria La Ganga, Nancy Rivera Brooks, Linda Williams and Irene Chang in Los Angeles; Mary Ann Galante in Orange County; Lisa Romaine in New York; Liane Hart in Houston; Ann Rovin in Denver; and Suzette Parmley in San Francisco contributed to this report.
