Stores see 'busy to average' after-Christmas turnouts
Customers line up for Christmas bargains this morning at Boscov's in Park City Center.
By Tim Mekeel
Published Dec 26, 2006 13:39
Lancaster County residents, though, didn’t need more R&R.
They got right back to shopping.
Countians returned to local stores to perform the usual day-after-Christmas retail rituals.
They returned unwanted gifts, spent gift cards and snagged deeply discounted holiday merchandise.
Stores and malls this morning reported mixed turnouts, ranging from busy at Park City to “an average Tuesday” at Tanger Outlet Center.
“There’s a lot of people walking through the mall, carrying a lot of bags,” said Michele Glover, Park City marketing coordinator.
No matter what size crowd they encountered today, customers found the post-Christmas mood calmer than the pre-Christmas one.
“It’s not as hectic and harried,” said Chuck Simmons, general manager of Tanger. “It gets busy, but it’s busy with exchanges and gift cards.”
“There’s definitely a different atmosphere,” agreed Glover. “There’s not a sense of urgency to get the toy or gift they wanted. It’s more relaxed. People are walking a little bit slower.”
Though the volume of customers on the day after Christmas is far less than on the day after Thanksgiving (a.k.a. “Black Friday”), merchants enticed shoppers with some of the same lures.
Many stores opened early, at 6 or 7 a.m., and had special “doorbuster” items on sale for the initial hours of business.
And as they did a month ago, stores offered additional markdowns to customers who brought in coupons clipped from newspaper ads, or rewarded customers with gift cards for spending certain amounts.
But unlike “Black Friday,” this time more stores emphasized their assortment of video games and DVDs — presumably to play on high-tech hardware brought by Santa.
They also spotlighted deals on storage containers, to stash those holiday decorations, as well as post-Christmas clearance bargains on wrapping paper, holiday cards and trim-the-tree products.
After-Christmas shopping is becoming increasingly important to stores, largely because gift cards are becoming more popular, according to a survey done for the National Retail Federation.
Consumers were expected to buy $24.8 billion worth of gift cards this Christmas season, up a hefty 34 percent from $18.5 billion during the 2005 holiday season.
Illustrating the growing value of after-Christmas shopping to retailers, the week ended Dec. 31 accounted for 15.6 percent of total holiday sales in 2005, up from 10.3 percent in the corresponding period of 2004.
At other stores and malls around the county, crowds this morning varied in size.
The Ephrata Wal-Mart had about 100 people — “diehard clearance shoppers” — at its doors awaiting its 6 a.m. opening, said store manager Russ Colton.
Though the turnout was “nothing like” a Black Friday crowd, Colton said the day remained “an important day for us” because of the strong sales of marked-down Christmas merchandise.
“It will be busier today than it will be in a few days,” he predicted. “People are spending their gift cards and shopping for after-Christmas clearance. But it quickly fades in a couple days.”
Tanger’s Simmons and David Ober, general partner of Rockvale Outlets, said damp weather helped to hold down crowds at their outdoor malls on Lincoln Highway East.
“It’s been steady this morning, but not overwhelming,” said Ober. “That’s what we expected. We thought it would start out a little slow.”
As Simmons noted, recipients of gift cards often are leisurely shoppers, because the cards generally don’t expire for a year. “There isn’t any pressure for people to come out until it’s convenient for them,” he said.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report).
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