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Retail sales exceed merchants’ hopes
by Nick Wheeler
Scroll Staff
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| Melissa Wright from Roberts, Idaho, works to reduce the line of the customers returning their gifts after Christmas at the Rexburg Kmart. Sean Miller / Scroll |
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Nationwide, businesses have seen the slowest holiday season in 30 years, Anne D’Innocenzio, an Associated Press business writer, said. But retail sales have been normal or above average for area businesses.
Sales this Christmas season were “better than years past,” Rick Klein, store manager at the Rexburg Kmart, said.
Beehive Book, an LDS bookstore located on 2nd East, reported a “normal” shopping season.
“Things were good,” Heidi Franz, an employee of the bookstore, said. “We’re no Wal-Mart.”
Despite the suffering economy, Wal-Mart continued to be a popular Christmas shopping center.
After Christmas, “shoppers rummaged through stores for post-Christmas sales ... as merchants sought to clear out leftovers and put behind them the weakest holiday season in at least 30 years,” D’Innocenzio said.
The day after Christmas, Wal-Mart reduced prices of Christmas merchandise by 50 percent. Kmart began with the same discount, but has since reduced prices up to 60 percent off.
For the post-holiday crowds, Lisa Jaramillo, Rexburg Wal-Mart store manager, made sure the store was well-staffed.
Klein made sure that lines were set up correctly for the approximately 2 percent of Christmas sales that would be returned during the post-Christmas return frenzy. Shopping during the Christmas season accounts for 10 percent of all annual sales in most retail stores.
For the first four days after Christmas, Klein was lenient on those customers who didn’t have receipts for their returned products. But after the four days, he began to follow store policy.
As the return season came to an end, merchants said they expected the losses would be made up when shoppers redeem their gift certificates and pick up a few extra items beyond their gift amount, D’Innocenzio said.
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