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Rebecca Walton, 23, of Redmond, pushes a shopping cart filled with merchandise to her car at the Cascade Village Shopping Center in Bend on Wednesday. Nationally, retailers are pushing holiday sales past Christmas in hopes of enticing thrifty shoppers. Central Oregon’s malls were busy Wednesday, which retailers hoped would be one of the top 10 shopping days of the season.
Rob Kerr / The Bulletin
Black Wednesday
Locally, major shopping areas are still filled with hustle and bustle
By Anna Sowa / The Bulletin
Published: December 27. 2007 4:00AM PSTInside Banana Republic in Bend on Wednesday, Sisters resident Linda Seelhorst sat near the front door, surrounded by shopping bags and playing with her young granddaughter on her lap.
Seelhorst said she was waiting while her two daughters-in-law shopped on their Christmas break. The women said they had spent between $300 and $400 by noon, during what retailers say is a shopping day to rival the day after Thanksgiving, referred to as Black Friday.
Fearing consumers would spend more conservatively this year, retailers pushed holiday sales earlier in December and are pulling them past Christmas Day, hoping to snag shoppers spending their gift cards and making returns, and other bargain-hunters.
Retail industry experts have said that the housing slump, credit crunch and rising gas and food costs would curb holiday consumer spending.
Last-minute shoppers boosted sales last weekend by nearly 19 percent, according to ShopperTrak, a Chicago-based research firm that monitors thousands of retail outlets, although sales were down for the previous three weeks compared with one year ago.
In Central Oregon, retailers have reported a fairly strong holiday shopping season.
Parking lots were full and busy in Bend’s major shopping areas Wednesday.
Shopko in Bend opened at 6 a.m. Wednesday to snag shoppers hunting for sales. Even at that dark, cold hour, the store had 15 people waiting to get in, said manager Mark Pratt.
“I was amazed because I didn’t expect that,” Pratt said, adding that the rest of the morning had been slow, which he attributes to icy weather.
The rest of the holiday season went well at Shopko, Pratt said. He said some of his monthly sales were among the company’s highest.
Across town at the Bend Factory Stores, property manager Sherry Short said Wednesday traffic seemed “pretty busy,” but she won’t know the discount retailers’ sales numbers until today.
“Our sales have been up consistently every month for the past year,” she said. “I think people are just looking for a better way to spend their money and get more for their money.”
She’s also seen a lot of people redeeming their gift cards and doing exchanges.
For the fourth straight year, gift cards were expected to be the No. 1 holiday gift, with more than two-thirds of consumers expected to buy them, according to a survey from consulting firm Deloitte & Touche.
Gift card sales will total $26.3 billion this holiday season in the United States, according to a survey from the National Retail Federation, up from $24.8 billion in 2006.
Additionally, the average consumer was expected to spend more on gift cards than last year — $122.59 in 2007 over $116.51 in 2006, according to the federation.
Anna Sowa can be reached at 383-0304 or asowa@bendbulletin.com.
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