Holiday sales mixed for local shops
Photo/Rebecca Goldfine
Jane Freedman, a sales associate at Carla's boutique in Portland, says this holiday season was an improvement over 2009
While many Portland storekeepers reported sales were brisker this holiday shopping season than in the past two years, others noted their sales had not yet fully rebounded from recession levels.
"Everybody's up," Janis Beitzer, executive director of Portland's Downtown District, says about local shops. "Some are just up more than others. Definitely in the Old Port it is significantly better than last year, [although] it is a wide range. I'm hearing anything from 2% to 6%."
At Carla's, a women's boutique on Fore Street, Sales Associate Jane Freedman says while last year was not "disastrous," this season was better. She said she's seeing more tourists from New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts visit Portland throughout the year to eat out and shop at downtown spots.
But others, including Ken Kantro, owner of Lovell Designs, a jewelry store on Exchange Street, were more guarded in their optimism about an economic recovery. Kantro called the season "sketchy." "What saved us was our mail-order business and Internet sales," he says, which soared 15% this year over last, while sales at his Old Port, Kennebunkport, Freeport and Portsmouth stores remained flat.
"People who have it (money) will buy it," Kantro observes, speaking about jewelry. "But fewer people have it."
Curtis Picard, executive director of the Maine Merchants Association, says after informally surveying his members about the holiday shopping season, he believes sales were up. But he points out that, based on data from a 10-year period, stores should be posting an average gain of 5% every year. "Which is why these last two years have been hard," Picard explains. "We were down in 2008, and flat in 2009, so even if we end up being 5% above last year, it's pretty good, but it doesn't follow the trend. We can't say that retail is great, and everything's fine."
Despite the mixed observations here, national reports say holiday sales are up by 5.5%, making it the best season since 2006. Total holiday sales during the 50 days before Christmas reached $584.3 billion, surpassing 2007 totals of $566.34 billion, according to Mastercard Advisors' SpendingPulse, which tracks spending across all transactions. The company also reported that Internet sales increased by 15.4% to $36.4 billion.
Alison Tostevin, the manager of Treehouse Toys on Exchange Street, says her sales were on par with national numbers, climbing between 4% and 5% this season. "In comparison to the last couple of years, it was a great season," she says. In weak economies, though, she figures that toy stores remain more impervious to financial strain than boutiques or other types of shops. "When people cut back, they're not going to cut out the kid stuff," she explains.
The mild weather likely encouraged shoppers to head out to stores as well, Picard says, with no major storm hitting the area in the days leading up to Christmas.
He also points out that with the rise of gift cards, the holiday retail season now stretches beyond December, giving shops more time to move excess inventory. After-Christmas sales account for 15% of holiday sales, according to research firm ShopperTrak. "I told my mother-in-law this weekend that the gift card she gave me for $50 is really more like $100 after Jan. 1 because of all the incredible bargains folks can find," he writes in an e-mail.
The blizzard likely cut into some of that shopping exuberance in the days immediately following Christmas, but there's plenty of time to make up for that.
"We are hopeful that this momentum will spread to other economic sectors and turn into overall job gains," Picard writes. "Maine retailers are employing approximately 88,000 Mainers, but that figure is usually closer to 93,000 when times are better. Perhaps this season will continue on into 2011."
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