Buffums’ Closings ‘Like Losing an Old Friend’

The perfectly centered signs taped to Buffums’ five display windows at the Fashion Valley mall in San Diego on Thursday were blunt and to the point. “All Sales Final. No Returns. No Exchanges.”

For Buffums, there also is no future. The chain announced Wednesday that it will close its 16 Southern California department stores in late May after 87 years in business.

Buffums began losing its luster as a retailer a decade or more ago, and its demise was widely rumored in recent days, but the actual news came as a blow to many people. In communities such as Long Beach and Pomona, Buffums’ shutdown will pull badly needed stores out of already faltering shopping centers.

For many of Buffums’ 1,100 full-time and 300 part-time workers, it could mean a tough search for a new job amid a weak economy.

And among Buffums’ longtime customers, many of them elderly, the store closings are being regarded much like the loss of an old, dependable friend.

“We’re all a little devastated,” said Helen Hyde, a San Pedro retiree who grew up in Long Beach and who has shopped at Buffums for 30 years.

“We always came here for everything. It’s always been a good store. We’re especially upset the beauty salon is disappearing,” she said, her hair newly coiffed.

As she browsed through the children’s department looking for a dress for a great-grandchild, Hyde added that she “probably won’t come downtown anymore.”

Still, even many of the nostalgic customers who headed to Buffums stores Thursday recognized that the chain’s demise was a long time coming.

“In the men’s department, there’s been nothing to buy for at least five years,” said Mabel Rowland, a shopper from Chino who visited the Pomona store. She said the store used to be “very classy.”

Betty Hess of Solana Beach, who has held a Buffums’ charge card since 1953, said the closing didn’t surprise her either. “There have been so very few people in their store lately,” she said.

That wasn’t the case during the early 1950s when the Hess family shopped at the “old Long Beach store with its wonderful old wooden floor and the neat salesladies.”

There are no well-worn wooden floors at Fashion Valley in San Diego where Hess stopped Thursday, but “they still have the great salesladies,” she said. “It’s really sad to see them go.”

Faced with growing losses and its aging clientele, Buffums’ Australian owner--Adelaide Steamship Co.--made sporadic efforts in recent years to try to turn around the chain. Stores were remodeled in Westminster, Laguna Hills and San Diego. A new president and chief executive, John H. Duncan, was named in August, and in the following months new merchandising managers were hired.

Adelaide Steamship also considered a revitalization plan of $30 million to $50 million that called for remodeling stores, bringing in new lines of merchandise and launching a major advertising campaign. Ultimately, however, the company decided that the Southern California recession and the damage already done to Buffums were too much to overcome.

Dixie Towers, who joined Buffums in September as senior vice president in charge of merchandising, noted that many of the chain’s stores didn’t even have signs for their “junior” departments. “It was like we didn’t want anyone to know that anyone young would shop here,” Towers said.

The chain has continued over the years to sell a lot of china and glassware. In addition, sales in December at Buffums stores open more than one year climbed 3.5% despite the generally weak Christmas season for retailers.

But Buffums’ apparel business--a mainstay for most department store chains--appeared to have gotten as run-down as many of its stores.

“My grandmother worked here for 25 years. That’s the only reason I come to Buffums at all,” said Tawnie Bassett-Parkins, 29, who was at the downtown Long Beach store Thursday trying to use up gift certificates her grandmother had given her. “She said, ‘Hurry up and cash these in before they go under.’

“For my clothes, they don’t really have the kinds I wear. For my kids, it’s too expensive.”

Leasing agents at some top malls, including the Glendale Galleria, are said to have been eager to replace Buffums stores with stronger retailers. At some of Buffums’ best But elsewhere, community leaders are worried about the consequences of Buffums’ pending shutdown.

In Long Beach, where the company is headquartered and where it was founded in 1904, the closing of two Buffums stores is another blow to the city’s anemic sales tax base as well as the loss of a landmark business.

The stores are in struggling malls--Long Beach Plaza downtown and Marina Pacifica on Pacific Coast Highway, which will make it difficult to find retailers to replace Buffums.

In Pomona, Buffums was the eastern anchor of an outdoor nine-block pedestrian mall that opened downtown in 1962. The mall enjoyed a brief success before getting battered by competition from enclosed malls and other nearby retail centers. Buffums is the only major general merchandise retailer on the mall, which is occupied by thrift stores, a medical college, antique shops, storefront churches and other stores and offices.

City Manager Julio Fuentes said the city redevelopment agency had been working with Buffums on a plan to refurbish the store. Just a few weeks ago, he said, the city and the store were close to an agreement that would have seen the redevelopment agency contribute $700,000 to a $2.5-million renovation project.

H. S. (Biff) Byrum, executive vice president of Pomona Economic Development Corp., said of the store: “It’s like losing an old friend as far as the town is concerned. We’re going to miss it like crazy.”

Bettina Boxall in Long Beach, Greg Johnson in San Diego, Mike Ward in Pomona and Chris Woodyard in Orange County contributed to this story.