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Good, better, best.
Forget the blues predicted for the Christmas season by the rest of the country.
Salisbury retailers — managers of large retail outlets and independent owners of local businesses — would have breathed a collective sigh of relief by Wednesday afternoon if they had been able to stop running long enough to catch their breath at all.
They all declared business the day after Christmas better than expected.
They all said the Christmas season, especially the last week before the big day, brought more customers than they’d hoped for, given the Sept. 11 tragedy compounded by layoffs and recession.
They all were still literally breathing hard Wednesday with those day-after-Christmas sales, and none of them had the slightest desire to echo the sentiment of one employee of a large outlet, who said she got so tired Christmas Eve that she looked at all the customers in the store and couldn’t help herself.
“Please,” she wished, “don’t nobody else come in here.”
But the customers kept coming.
Almost with a single voice, the managers and the owners said they’re happy people seem to be saying that it’s time to get back to normal.
“Today we’re doing very good,” said Butch Pierce, manager of Marshall’s at Innes Street Market on Faith Road. “We expect to do better than last year.” And they did better than last year before Christmas.
“ I think a lot of people listened to the news which was negative,” he said, “and then took it on themselves to say, ‘Let’s spend. We have the money, and we have to get something for Christmas, so let’s do it. We have the feeling that things are getting back to normalcy, so let’s get with it.’
Business has been “excellent for the entire season, better than we hoped for,” he said. “The days leading up to Christmas, Saturday and Sunday and Monday, were excellent, very good, above expectations. We were equaling last year, and then we started beating it.”
“We’re busy!” announced Keith McAdams, manager of Belk Department Store at the Salisbury Mall.
And he wasn’t surprised.
“We’re usually pretty busy after Christmas, and this year is not different. It’s going great! There are a lot of people in here.”
The store opened two hours earlier than usual and had a relatively slow start but then picked up to a normal pace. From then on, he said, “it was pretty well slammed, like the day before Christmas.”
And December was a good month.
“You can’t help but wonder when you hear the media talk gloom and doom,” he said, “but it’s working us to death, just keeping up. ... Anything for the home has been unbelievable, just absolutely huge.”
All that business gives him hope for the future.
“I think you’ll begin to see things turn around,” he says. “I think the shock of 9-11 is over with, and I think it’s pulled the country together, and people are going to get along with their lives. I think as bad as it was, good has come out it. It’s pulled people together, and I think we’re going to come forward.”
J.C. Penney at Salisbury Mall has been busy, too, says Jennie Capps, a senior customer service specialist.
“We held our own” leading up to Christmas, and the day before was “tremendously busy. We’ve got no complaints.” And when she got to work at 1 p.m. Monday she was happy to see “the parking lot rather full.”
Ditto Wal-Mart on Jake Alexander Boulevard and Staples at Innes Street Market.
“We’ve been very, very busy, better than I expected,” said Ken Jeffries, Wal-Mart manager.
“Last week,” he said, “really pulled the month out for us and especially the last three or four days, which were excellent.”
Wednesday was a “very, very busy day by customer count with a lot of returns which come off sales, but we’ve been running all registers since 10 this morning. It’s been about like Christmas Eve, which was definitely better than we expected it to be.”
Wal-Mart here reflected a national report in the Wall Street Journal that Wal-Mart’s holiday sales rose slightly more than expected. Earlier this month, Wal-Mart had estimated an increase of 4 to 6 percent in stores open more than a year, probably toward the lower end of that. Now that’s been revised with sales expected at the higher end of that range between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.
Traffic is good, Jeffries says, “and between 9-11 and the economy and the weather that affected our software sales, all in all, we’re happy.”
So is Mark Halloway, manager of Staples at Innes Street Market.
“Considering the economy and the way everything is, it’s absolutely better than I expected. This side of town is becoming more of a power center, more of a shopping area.” And the day after Christmas was “real good.”
Employees at Pier One at Innes Street Market were also happy with more day-after business than they expected.
“We’re mobbed!” said Tonya Wallace, assistant manager. She’d called early Wednesday morning though she was wasn’t scheduled to work until later in the day, “and they screamed at me to come in early, so I’m here.”
On the other hand, Ben Ribelin, owner of Signature Fine Jewelry, didn’t expect any day-after Christmas business and didn’t get it, but he’s happy.
“Once in a while you pick up a few customers the day after Christmas,” he said. “People have a little Christmas money to spend, but time is spent on exchanges, ring-sizing and this sort of thing.”
But this year’s Christmas season turned out to be “very strong, We ended up the same as last year, which for us was a miracle. We worked harder to get it. We wrote a lot more tickets at a somewhat lower ticket price, but we ended up about the same.”
Some things were different.
“We normally run only 40 to 45 percent on credit cards,” he said, “but this year, 90 percent was on credit cards. I’ve never seen so much plastic used. I think people were pretty free in their spending.” He didn’t see anyone worried about debt.
“Everybody seemed to be very happy and upbeat, and they wouldn’t extend themselves like that unless they were optimistic about the future.
“It was definitely better than we expected. I was a little anxious after Thanksgiving. It went into a bit of a lull, and then it began to pick up steam and got stronger and stronger as we got closer to Christmas, and we feel good about it.”
Mary Smith, who just bought Carol’s at Ketner Center in September, has no way to make comparisons, and she spent Wednesday marking merchandise for the sale which began this morning.
But she was happy, too.
“We’ve had a lot of traffic and plenty of sales,” she said. “Our Christmas season was excellent. I was very pleased.”
Paul Bernhardt of Bernhardt’s Hardware downtown on North Main was unhappy only with the weather.
“Our Christmas was extremely good except for heating supplies, which is a big category,” he says. “The rest of it — wagons, tricycles, even sleds — everything went well except heating. That summertime weather didn’t do anything for the heating business.”
Wednesday’s cold weather predictions changed everything.
“Today,” he said, “we were swamped.”
Contact Rose Post at 704-797-4251 or rpost@salisburypost.com
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