With the holiday shopping season currently in swing, businesses are dealing with the shortest holiday shopping season possible, with only 26 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“That means there’s one less weekend for shopping,” said Mark Morgan, president of the Moorestown Business Association.
Morgan added that this is the first time in more than a decade that local businesses in Moorestown have faced such a short season, with the last time being in 2002.
Morgan added that he was shocked to see large retail stores open on Thanksgiving, but said that Small Business Saturday has definitely seemed to pick up momentum within the last few years.
In addition, Sustainable Moorestown and Towni Localistics helped to drive customers to shop local on Nov. 29, sponsoring “Plaid Friday” within the township.
As the producing artistic director for the Moorestown Theater Company, Morgan said he could not speak for all small businesses in Moorestown, but said he would probably stay open later and offer more or deeper discounts to offset the shorter season if he owned a small retail business.
For Moorestown Hardware, a blanket discount during the weekend after Thanksgiving was one of the ways it planned to help drive sales.
“We’re trying to generate more excitement earlier,” co-owner Julie Bender said.
Bender said while the store usually sent a flyer around that time of year of holiday items it does not normally carry, this year she and Pete Bender decided to try the blanket discount.
“We wanted to try something new,” Julie said. “It kind of makes them create their own sale.”
To help gear the customer toward the holiday season, Julie also said holiday light displays were set up in the store as early as Oct. 15.
“We even put out our snow shovels, just to let them know we had them,” she said.
According the Julie, the challenge was to get customers thinking about holiday shopping prior to Thanksgiving. She explained it was no easy feat, as many customers told her they just couldn’t get into the holiday shopping mindset that early.
Julie added that in the hardware business, other factors could also play a part in the amount of revenue generated during the season, such as the weather.
“If snow comes, we don’t mind,” Julie said. “But it’s a good thing and a bad thing.”
Julie explained that a little snow can help put shoppers in the holiday mindset and prompt them to do more shopping, but blizzards can have the opposite effect.
She said that with people not as aware of the shorter season this year, she expects to see more last-minute shoppers.
Owner of Carl’s Shoes Carl Barone also expects to see a drop in sales compared to last holiday season, but explained that the season is not typically his highest, since he does a good deal of orthopedic work. He also explained that shoes are typically not bought as often as gifts because of the custom-fitting involved.
However, Barone said he does expect to see some sales for both UGG Boots and gift certificates to slide off a little from the previous year.
“Even I will do less business because of the shorter shopping season,” he said. “Sure, it’s going to hurt.”
Barone added that many business owners he has talked to share his sentiments.
Looking forward to next year, Morgan said the MBA wants to create a gift certificate program that will make town wide gift certificates available to the public, similar to those currently used in Maple Shade.
In addition, Morgan said the MBA is looking to the county, which is in the process of recruiting retailers for gift certificates that can be used throughout Burlington County.
“To me it’s a great idea,” Morgan said. “Your money is being spent here.”
He added that he hopes to see both the county-wide gift certificates and the town-wide certificates available by next holiday shopping season.
“Hopefully this time next year, they’ll have theirs running and we’ll have ours running,” Morgan said.
In addition, Morgan said there has been talk of moving MBA’s Candlelight Night to a date closer to Thanksgiving in the future, as well as also looking into possibilities of tying the Moorestown Community House’s Tree Lighting Celebration to a shop local initiative.
“There is a lot being done to let the customer know we’re here,” Morgan said. “There are a lot of things happening here.”
