Holiday Buying Begins With Little Cheer

Despite President Bush’s best efforts to lead a parade of consumers to the nation’s malls, Friday’s traditional post-Thanksgiving kickoff to the holiday shopping season was generally slow and stingy, as economic hard times seemed to weigh heavily on shoppers’ minds.

At many malls in Southern California, shoppers reported they plan to scale back their holiday budgets and concentrate whatever purchases they make on necessities. Baking is back, cards are replacing gifts, cash is more popular than credit, and deep discounts are the order of the day.

“Less. There’s less money coming in, so less is going out” for gifts, said John Doyle as he shopped at the K mart store at Clairemont Mesa Boulevard in San Diego at noontime Friday. He said the recession and the gloomy economic outlook have changed his Christmas gift-buying plans.

Shopping mall managers in San Diego County insisted that shopper traffic was solid, although some conceded that parking lots took longer to fill than on past post-Thanksgiving Fridays. Also this year, special storewide sales were more prevalent, and at the University Towne Centre mall in San Diego, stores were offering free gift wrapping as an incentive for shoppers.

North County Fair in Escondido was jammed by early afternoon as parking lots were full and shoppers crowded into lines to get into some of the shops.

But interviews with San Diego shoppers revealed strong undercurrents of pessimism and caution about the economy. Many, including San Diego landscaper Jim Ramirez, said they planned to do more of their shopping at discount chains.

“Usually, I would shop at Nordstrom and Broadway and Penney,” said Ramirez, who was interviewed in front of the Target store on Sports Arena Boulevard. “This year, I’ll look for deals more, whereas last year (price) wasn’t as much an issue.”

Ramirez said that if his landscaping business is any barometer, the economy is in a deep slump. “Business is real slow. The attitude is not ‘Let’s do it,’ but ‘Let’s wait a while on it.’ People are holding on to their money, so I’m not able to get out and spend in the shops as frivolously as I have in past years.”

Large numbers of retailers across the country tried for the first time Friday to lure shoppers out of bed with widespread early-bird specials, but even that didn’t spur the kind of response they had hoped for. Some stores opened at 5 a.m. in Atlanta, 7 a.m. in Los Angeles and 8 a.m. in San Diego and San Francisco.

At the Payless shoe store in the Crenshaw Plaza in Baldwin Hills, Adassa Sinclair was buying winter boots for her four grandchildren to wear to school--not the toys that she purchased last year.

Some consumers, like Kathy and Bob Booker of West Covina, weren’t buying anything. While the Bookers, who both lost their jobs this year, and their five children still made their annual pilgrimage to the Plaza in West Covina, this year they didn’t go there to shop; they went only to see Santa Claus.

Pointing to her 5-year-old daughter, Kathy Booker whispered: “She wants a B-I-K-E and I can’t buy it for her.”

Bush and his wife, Barbara, drew throngs of startled shoppers during a visit to a mall in Frederick, Md., where he paid cash for toys and some sporting goods at a J.C. Penney store.

Retailers and analysts said the opening day of the holiday shopping season only reinforced earlier predictions that the nation is in for another Scrooge-like Christmas, with consumers fearfully hoarding their cash rather than following Bush’s pleas for a consumer-led exodus from the country’s economic woes.

Kenneth A. Macke, chairman of Dayton Hudson Corp., which operates Target and Mervyn’s stores among others, said he expects to do no better this Christmas than last year and that nothing is changing his mind about that.

“The consumer is very value-smart,” Macke said. “They’re trying to lower their risk as much as possible.” Some, he suggests, are holding out, awaiting even deeper discounts than those already in the stores.

In its most recent survey released Friday, the Conference Board reported that the American household is expected to spend $375 on Christmas gifts this year, down from $395 last year. The private business research group said 1991 Christmas sales are expected to be close to $36 billion, about 3% less than last year--and a far cry below the typical good year, in which sales rise from 6% to 10%.

“Nothing we’ve seen so far changes what we have been saying will happen this Christmas,” said Richard Giss, a retailing specialist for the accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche in Los Angeles. “We are off to a very slow start.”

Said Janet Mangano, a retail industry analyst with Burnham Securities Inc. In New York: “People are hunkering down . . . We still find ourselves in a recessionary setting.”

Even San Diego shoppers, such as Mary Jane Sabahi, a computer programmer, who weren’t planning to reduce their Christmas spending, wondered aloud if they were doing the right thing.

“I do think the economy’s in a slump, with so many people laid off at my company and at companies of other people I know,” Sabahi said. “I still have my job, so I feel secure for at least the next six months or so. But I may not be as prudent as others might be in my situation.

As had been expected, business was most brisk Friday at discount and lower-priced outlets, while upscale department and fashion stores, which prospered in the 1980s, were suffering.

At a Target store in Northridge, where row upon row of items--from electronics goods to toys to gift wrap--were on sale, about 100 shoppers were waiting outside the doors for the 7 a.m. opening. By 9 a.m. the lot was full and all the shopping carts were in use.

“Like everyone else, I’m worried about the recession and I don’t want to get in debt,” said Gerri Sherrill of West Hills.

At Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, which serves the region’s primary aerospace employment center, merchants said the cash registers were not as full as they ought to be, in part because of the large number of layoffs at nearby defense plants.

“The prevailing economic environment is less positive than last year at this time. Gross national product is marginally lower, the unemployment rate is higher and consumers are less confident about the present state of the economy,” said Fabian Linden, executive director of the Board’s Consumer Research Center.

San Diegan Louise Monson said her shopping has been curtailed due to higher prices for toys and the increased California sales tax.

“It stinks, it really does. The new sales tax is what has done it. You get less for your money. A lot of the toys are higher this year,” Monson said. “If they’re going to make them higher, they should at least add something to them.”

Shoppers also reported a decided reluctance to use credit cards, preferring to pay cash rather than increase their debts at a time of uncertainty about their jobs and the economy.

It was no different across the nation.

In Atlanta, Wal-Mart stores opened at 5 a.m. with a four-hour “Early Bird Christmas Blitz One Day Extravaganza” featuring a Murray 20-inch bicycle for $45 rather than the $54.97 regular price. There were even boxes of doughnuts to greet the early risers.

At Bloomingdale’s in Manhattan, where shoppers normally vie for empty cabs, the situation was reversed; hungry cabdrivers circled the block hunting for passengers.

In Denver, Carolyn Bayliss, 49, said worries about her job are dictating how she spends on this holiday season. A program security analyst at defense contractor Martin Marietta for the last 12 years, Bayliss confided that she expects to shop at thrift stores for her grandchildren--and then wrap the second-hand clothing “just like they’re new.”

Even those who say they haven’t yet been hit by the weak economy were paying close attention to prices Friday. Some hoped poor retail sales would force discounted prices down even further.

Even those who say they haven’t yet been hit by the recession were paying close attention to prices Friday. Some hoped poor retail sales would force discounted prices down even further.

“You see this ‘1/2 off’ sign? It’s going to be 75% off soon,” said Covina resident Kenneth Elston, 33, explaining why he and his wife, Dorienne, were merely window shopping Friday at the West Covina mall.

At South Plaza in Costa Mesa, with the largest sales in the West, business was booming Friday. Veteran shoppers and clerks said it looked as busy, or busier, than last year. But even amid the Cartier and Tiffany’s and Giorgio’s, the thrifty ways of this year’s consumers appeared to be the rule.

Even for the Salvation Army. Outside the Sears store in Santa Monica, volunteer Lynda Elizabeth Shough jingled her bell incessantly trying to rouse donations for the destitute.

“Money is a whole lot tighter,” she said. Instead of contributing $5, she added, “people are dropping 50 cents this year.”

The following Times staff writers contributed to this story: Patrice Apodaca, Ron Russell, David Haldane, Kim Kowsky, Kevin Cullinane, Irene Chang, Marc Lacey, Jeffrey L. Rabin, Jesus Sanchez, Nancy Rivera Brooks, Stuart Silverstein, Chris Woodyard, Adrianne Goodman and Chris Kraul in Southern California; Victor Zonana in New York; Ann Rovin in Denver; Edith Stanley in Atlanta; Lazzareschi reported from San Francisco and Kraul from San Diego.