Holiday sales mixed for LV stores

Grace Leong

Thursday, Dec. 27, 2001 | 11:03 a.m.

Amid industry predictions of smaller gains in holiday sales this year, Las Vegas retailers and malls reported mixed results.

Some saw flat to modest growth in sales for the holiday buying season -- Nov. 23 through Dec. 24 -- while others expect slight declines when final numbers are tallied.

In trying to overcome this holiday season's challenges, local retailers say they courted last-minute shoppers over the last weekend before Christmas with longer shopping hours and with steeper and earlier-than-usual markdowns.

Analysts say retailers nationwide and locally were forced to start offering deep discounts almost immediately after the Thanksgiving holiday this year rather than in the week before Christmas. They say these efforts were necessary because retail sales, which were already slowing before Sept. 11, were hit hard in the economic fallout after the terrorist attacks.

"This year, we're seeing up to 75 percent discounts starting the weekend after Thanksgiving. Last year, we saw those discounts only in January and February when retailers were trying to clear their merchandise to bring in the new Spring line," said Patrice Selleck, a spokeswoman for the New York-based International Council of Shopping Centers.

Rodney Thanepohn, marketing director of the 1.2 million-square-foot Boulevard Mall on Maryland Parkway in Las Vegas, agreed.

"The 50-75 percent discounts we've seen before Christmas this year are typically what we'd see after Christmas. This tells me that the discounts after Christmas will be much larger than what we've seen in previous years," he said.

The International Council of Shopping Centers predicts a 1 percent gain in holiday sales for specialty stores nationwide excluding anchor department stores, compared with a 2.2 percent gain in sales last year.

Analysts expect electronics, home entertainment and home furnishings to be the strongest performers this season as shoppers anticipate spending more time at home in the coming year.

Mitigating an overall weak economy and weak consumer confidence are cheap gasoline prices, steeper markdowns and a longer holiday buying season this year, Selleck said.

"With Christmas falling on a Tuesday this year, the holiday buying season ... was extended this year to 32 days, one day longer than in 2000. This year's holiday season is the longest since 1990," she said. "Because of the extra day, we can grow total sales nationwide."

Chicago-based Whitehall Co. Jewelers, which has two stores at the Boulevard Mall and five others in the Las Vegas area, said the extra shopping day translates to a 3 percent increase in sales for its seven stores. The jeweler said it was initially expecting a 3 percent drop in holiday sales this year for its Las Vegas stores because of the recession, but instead saw a 6 percent gain over last year.

Wes Klafke, Whitehall's district manager, said the company lured customers with 70 percent discounts on about 400 items per store and targeted its previous clients by sending them gift certificates and inviting them to special in-store promotions instead of "doing the usual broad-based advertising in newspapers and on television."

"This year, instead of sticking to our pricing structure, we were very aggressive with pricing. Our company's policy was not to lose sales because of prices. And our executive vice president from our Chicago office wanted to be personally involved in the sales in Las Vegas of large-ticket items, that is, jewelry that retails at $5,000 and above," he said. "That's why we're not missing sales of big-ticket items."

Many Las Vegas shoppers, such as Jerry Montgomery, owner of a truck stop and gas station in Palm Springs, Calif., said the terrorism didn't affect their holiday spending.

Montgomery said he "spent as much if not more" in holiday purchases this year even though his business this month fell 12 percent from last December.

"We noticed a lot of discounts in the weeks leading up to Christmas. But we held off until after Christmas because that is the time to shop, when stores that typically overstock in anticipation of brisk shopping downsize their inventories after Christmas. Your money will go a lot farther if you buy now," he said while shopping Wednesday.

Grace Pochodaj, a native of Toronto, said she travels frequently to Las Vegas to shop for clothes and perfumes because she finds better deals in the United States than in Canada.

"In Toronto, a (luxury) perfume set like this would retail for about 80 Canadian dollars, excluding a 15 percent sales tax. Here in Las Vegas, it's only about 30 Canadian dollars, and the sales tax here is only 7 1/4 percent," she said.

But there are also shoppers like Candy Webb, a long-time Las Vegan and former Aladdin hotel-casino worker, who spent less this holiday season because she recently bought a new car.

"With 0 percent financing, we were finally able to buy a Suzuki seven-passenger SUV, which cost about $25,000. So this year, I spent about $400 compared with $700 last year on Christmas shopping."

Meanwhile, sales at the Forum Shops at Caesars are expected to grow 3 to 5 percent for the year compared with gains of up to 10 percent last year, helped by strong sales in the months before the attacks, said Maureen Crampton, marketing director of the Forum Shops.

But holiday sales were flat from last year. A decline in international tourism was offset by good demand from local residents and visitors from California and other neighboring states who attended the Las Vegas Bowl at Sam Boyd Stadium on Christmas Day, she said.

"Although sales were down a little at the start of the holiday season in November, sales in the last weekend going into Christmas were strong. Forum Shops was one of the few malls that were open on Christmas Day and FAO Schwarz said its toy sales were very good that day because of the visitors who attended the Las Vegas Bowl. And we're now gearing up for New Year's eve, which is one of our biggest sales days," Crampton said.

"Several of our high-end ready-to-wear stores saw double digit increases in sales this year in the week before and leading into Christmas Day. Leather goods and jewelry stores also did well," she said. "Many stores this year were more aggressive in setting themselves apart from other local retailers. They did more in-store promotions like offering gifts with purchases or more informal modelling of apparel."

Thanepohn said Boulevard Mall retailers' sales were mixed.

"While sales of high-end items like jewelry are generally down, children's clothing stores, toy stores and some selected merchants have reported sales up 50 percent so far," he said.

Chuck Zogel, manager of J.C. Penney Co. at the Boulevard Mall, expects slightly lower sales for his store this year because of the weak economy, casino layoffs and the slowdown in tourism.

"Although we've just had our largest one-day sale in the history of the Boulevard Mall store on Dec. 15 -- which is an event where we put just about everything on sale for just one day and we run additional discounts on already discounted items for a certain period of time that day -- we are still expecting lower overall sales this season," he said. "This is because my store, given its proximity to the Las Vegas Strip, is impacted more by tourism than the other J.C. Penney stores in Las Vegas. This year, we're seeing fewer tourists and people are more cautious and buying only what they need."

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