‘Tis the Season to Be Santa

If you couldn’t make it as an Elvis impersonator and you’re willing to put on a little weight, there’s still hope.

There are plenty of openings these days for Santa Claus in stores and shopping malls. As any retailer worth his receivables has discovered, booking the man with the rosy cheeks, twinkling eyes and furry red suit can boost sales by bringing in hundreds of kid-toting shoppers.

At Nordstrom in South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, Santa will attract “a couple hundred” shoppers per day, said Greg Flotho, manager of the children’s boutique there. “When kids see him, they can drag Mom here to sit on Santa’s lap, then say, ‘I like this tractor, Mom’ or ‘This is a neat doll,’ ” he said.

As a result, a booming business has emerged to supply sleigh loads of Santas to malls, car dealers, restaurants, hotels and even banks during the holiday season. And there is brisk competition for the most convincing Santas--those with the best pot bellies, silvery-white beards and hearty ho-ho-hos.

The jostling for likely candidates is no surprise considering that Santa can mean the difference for merchants between a merry Christmas and an unhappy holiday.

Besides helping boost sales for retailers, St. Nick is a source of revenue for shopping malls, which can reap handsome fees by providing space for Santa, and for suppliers--typically photography firms or promotional agencies--which take in thousands of dollars from photo concessions.

Santa himself, however, most often earns blue-collar wages. In the Los Angeles area, Kris Kringles typically make $5-$9 per hour for a seasonal gig and $75-$150 per hour for parties, although in the most successful malls, a good Santa can earn $18 an hour or more.

At least a dozen major agencies--many of them national--and scores of smaller firms send Santas to Southland retailers. They include Western Temporary Services of Walnut Creek; Ciresi & Associates of Newberry, Ohio; Chris Cringle Special Events of San Pedro; Dixie Doodle Entertainment of Orange; Cherry Hill Photos from New Jersey, and Santa Plus of St. Charles, Mo.

Most of the suppliers provide a professional photographer with Santa, who snaps shots of the kids with St. Nick at about $6 a clip. Some even offer videotapes of the brief sessions with Kris Kringle, for about $20 apiece.

The Santa suppliers typically can gross $35,000-$40,000 at an average-sized regional mall for the season from photo sales and sales of novelty items, such as reindeer antlers and Christmas coloring books.

The potential revenue has caused competition in the Santa industry to climb about 200% in 20 years, estimated Jenny Zink, national marketing director with Western Temp, which began its Santa division in 1968 and now places about 3,300 St. Nicks each year.

Collectively, the agencies and photo studios each year suit up and ship out as many as 20,000 Kris Kringles to malls, parades and parties throughout the nation, retail officials estimate.

And of the money taken in from photo sales, 25% to 40% will go back to the malls as a commission. It’s not unusual for a regional center each Christmas season to collect $10,000 to $25,000--depending on the mall’s size--from photo sales, officials said.

Without the photo sales, malls and other retailers shell out anywhere from $1,500-$5,000 for the season, or up to $150 per hour, to have a Santa or two greeting customers.

The yearly demand for Santa’s throne depends on how retailers size up the holiday shopping season. With Christmas sales this year off to a slow start, the Santa business has been brisk, retail officials said. Half a dozen firms estimated that requests for St. Nick this year are running 15% to 20% ahead of 1988.

Retailers look to Santa to put shoppers in a jovial, carefree mood--all the better for opening their wallets. Moreover, his mere presence draws shoppers into toy departments.

Santa’s drawing power is especially helpful on slow weekdays, when busy parents are less likely to shop. Zink estimates that mall traffic jumps 10% to 15% when Santa is in a major store.

But a good Santa is not always easy to find. The supplier’s search for St. Nick often begins as early as September. But “it’s always very difficult to get Santas,” said one Santa supplier who asked not to be named. “We’re out there busting our butts on this.”

To find him, companies scour senior citizen bulletin boards, Daily Variety for out-of-work actors and lists of last year’s recruits. And the quest for potential prospects doesn’t stop there.

“If I see (a Santa look-alike) at a bus stop, I’ll pull over” and ask him, said Cathy Perks, a manager for Western Temporary Services in Tustin.

In fact, one elderly man told Perks that she was the sixth person to approach him in five weeks. “He said he was going to shave off his beard because he couldn’t take it anymore. He was out here for a mellow vacation and everyone was attacking him,” she said.

Sometimes the search reaches right into the shopping mall, when customers with whiskers--or who just look jolly--are cajoled in a pinch to fill Santa’s boots for even a day.

“The show must go on,” explains Bill Salerno, sales director with Ciresi & Associates, which supplies Santas to about 300 malls across the United States.