Temporary Store Concept Is Here to Stay : * Retailing: They’re open only a little while but do big business while they are. Analysts say they look like the hit of the holiday season.
They’re here today and gone tomorrow. But, ooh, what bargains!
Samsonite luggage is selling for a cut-rate $65, and satin ladies’ evening bags are going out the door for as little as $8 at a new Tuesday Morning store in Huntington Beach. Customers are snapping up top-quality men’s neckwear and women’s swimsuits at 50% off already discounted prices at the Bullock’s Clearance Center at Anaheim Plaza.
These are two of the temporary stores that some retail industry observers say could become the hit of the holiday shopping season in Orange County.
While these temporary stores take different forms, they all have one thing in common: they are open for only a few days or weeks until their discount merchandise sells out.
The strategy works like this:
Most stores earn half or more of the revenue for the year during the holiday season or other gift-giving periods such as Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. During slow shopping periods, however, the stores still must pay the usual overhead costs--rent, utilities and labor.
Temporary stores, however, reduce overhead costs by only opening when customer demand is at a peak. They typically are housed in off-the-beaten-path locations in older buildings that landlords might have trouble leasing to better-known retailers.
With the recession, most shoppers are looking for bargains, and that’s what these temporary stores specialize in. As a result, this retail concept is proliferating.
The newest entrant is Tuesday Morning, a Dallas-based chain that sells discount housewares, toys and seasonal items. After an absence of several years from Orange County, the company opened stores in Huntington Beach and Mission Viejo on Thursday.
By the 8 a.m. opening time, shoppers had formed a long line at the store in the Marina Village Shopping Center in Huntington Beach. Two hours later, business remained so brisk that a company executive was combing the parking lot to round up more shopping carts.
“We’re going to be out of things by the end of the day,” predicted Karen Costigan, a Tuesday Morning vice president. The hot items included International Silver butter dishes selling for $14 and boxes of Lego toys marked half-off at $18.49.
“You can have a ball here,” exclaimed Marge Reid of Garden Grove, as she maneuvered an overflowing cart through the jammed aisles. “We’ve always shopped at bargain prices.”
The Tuesday Morning stores in Orange County--the name doesn’t mean anything except that founder Lloyd L. Ross liked the sound of it--will be open through the end of the year. The stores generally open four times a year for a month or two at a time.
The chain leases its storefronts year-round but saves on labor costs by not staffing them during slow periods. The stores are open about six months during a year.
The Bullock’s Clearance Center in Anaheim Plaza, by contrast, opened earlier this month and will close by mid-November with no immediate plans to return. The center has transformed the ground floor of a former Robinson’s department store into a vast sea of clothing racks. It has also given other businesses in the struggling mall a welcome boost.
“We’re very pleased with the Bullock’s store here as a temporary,” said Jan M. Wohlwend, general manager of Anaheim Plaza.
Pat Murphy, a retail analyst for the Ernst & Young accounting firm in Costa Mesa, said temporary stores don’t necessarily steal sales from other retailers in a shopping center. “These temporary stores are competing for a different shopper,” she said.
The idea has caught fire with the Irvine Co., which wants more temporary retailers rotating through its shopping centers year-round.
“It’s a program we’re expanding,” said Barbara Rappolo, marketing director for Irvine Retail Properties Co. “These people bring an entrepreneurial spirit that might make our centers more interesting. You have to have an edge that goes beyond the typical merchant.”
Wohlwend said, however, that shopping center managers need to be choosy about selecting temporary merchants. Some temporary tenants at Anaheim Plaza last year drew complaints from customers. As a result, she said, the mall plans to choose more carefully this year, even if some storefronts remain empty.
