Shopping local saves holiday season
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| Local retailers fared better than expected over the holiday season. (ALEX SCAGGS/Rockbridge Report) |
Local residents helped small Lexington retailers weather a weak 2008 holiday season, according to the local Chamber of Commerce.
By contrast, some nationwide retail giants did not fare so well. Several last week released poor earnings reports for the season, measured against already low expectations.
Retail sales nationwide fell 2.7 percent from November and 10.8 percent from last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
No Lexington stores are expected to close their doors after the tight holiday season, said Sammy Moore, executive director of the Lexington-Rockbridge
Chamber of Commerce. He said community support was the main reason many retailers either matched or exceeded their expectations.
“I thought [retailers] were pretty happy,” he said. “I haven’t heard anybody say they were down a whole lot.”
Jon Lewis, owner of the pottery shop Creative Kiln, said his earnings fell abou 5 percent, but that was consistent with his expectations. He earns 30 to 40 percent of his yearly revenue over the holiday season. Much of that, he said, comes from college students. Because of that, he considers the second week of November the beginning of the holiday season – that is, before students leave town.
But this year, he said, he earned a good chunk of his revenue from the week after Christmas.
"That’s where the local community comes in,” he said.
Moore mentioned a recent letter to the editor of The News-Gazette as an example of the community’s initiative to shop local. Cindy Mullen of Rockbridge Baths wrote about the necessity of supporting Lexington businesses.
“Our local merchants are counting on us now more than ever,” Mullen wrote. “Shopping locally will help businesses keep their doors open and employees on our payroll.”
Moore said the Chamber of Commerce is also trying to encourage local shopping by trying to reach Rockbridge County residents first.
Large publicly traded retail chains seem to be hurting more from the spending slowdown, according to reports. Walmart’s stock price fell about 8 percent after its earnings fell, despite a rise in the number of same-store sales from the previous year, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Walmart wasn’t the only chain with big losses. Bloomberg News reported that other retail chains, such as Gap Inc., Macy’s, Best Buy and Limited Brands, also took hits this holiday season.
Most Lexington stores saw their revenues fall from the 2007 holiday season, but some business said the losses weren’t as bad as expected. Tracey Lackey, owner of cosmetics shop Let’s Make Up and lingerie store Intimate U, said her revenue fell only 1 percent from last year.
“Our local community came out in force, and really concentrated on shopping downtown this year instead of going out of town,” she said.
Books & Co. owner Anna-Lisa Fitzgerald and Sunday’s Child gift shop owner Lucia Owens agreed.
“It was the community members who really supported us,” said Fitzgerald. She said her 2008 sales matched her revenue from last year. She credited the Chamber of Commerce and an organization of local farmers and consumers, Rockbridge Grown, for encouraging the community to shop locally.
Not all stores depend on the holidays for a large percentage of their revenue. Susan Crawford, owner of clothing store Pappagallo, said most of her business comes from Parents’ Weekend and Alumni Weekend sales.
She estimated that about half of her customers are Washington and Lee students. And although her December sales were down a bit, she wasn’t disappointed.
Another clothing store owner, Alvin Carter, of Alvin-Dennis, Inc., said that he also relies more on Parents’ Weekend and Alumni Weekend sales.
“It’s hard to do the kind of business Christmas Eve that we do on Parents’ Weekend,” he said.
Lexington retailers aren’t out of the woods yet. Moore said that a slow season is coming up for retailers, because the late winter months have historically challenged local shops.
“The first quarter of this year is going to be tough,” he said. “We’re going to be challenged as much as anybody else around here. It’s best just to hunker down and hold on, and do what you can do at this point.”
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