When it comes to retail, change one thing ever-so-slightly and you’re in for a vastly different experience than you thought you were. And you might as well strap in, because a lot of those things will end up being out of your control anyway.
Earlier this week, I spoke to Nicole Pepe-Dorn, the owner of Treat Boutique on Hillview Street. She told me that up until a few days ago, December sales at her store had been unusually slow.
We talked about why that could be. Is it because the store moved from Burns Court to Hillview and people didn’t know where they were? Is it because all the experts were wrong and people just aren’t shopping as much as we thought they would? Is it because some seasonal residents didn’t come back this year for whatever reason — red tide, the election, the exchange rate, you name it? Or is it some other reason?
You know, retail is an awful lot like winemaking. I swear, I’m going somewhere with this.
I once read in a book called “The Wine Bible” by Karen MacNeil that wines end up the way they are because of the “terroir” in which they’re produced. Terroir refers to “the combination of factors including soil, climate and sunlight that gives wine and grapes their distinctive character,” according to Merriam-Webster. In other words, things like weather, soil, sun and even proximity to mountains all play a role in how wine eventually ends up tasting. Even the slightest alteration of just one of those factors can result in a completely different product.
That’s retail for you. Change one thing ever-so-slightly and you’re in for a vastly different experience than you thought you were. And you might as well strap in, because a lot of those things will end up being out of your control anyway.
Take the weather for example. It was pointed out to me by a colleague that the rain and wind we had on Thursday and Friday could certainly have an effect on when people finish their Christmas shopping. People who planned to shop on either of those days might be turned off by the storm and the possibility of getting rained splashed in their face between their parking space and the entrance to the Mall at University Town Center. Which means that we could see a lot more traffic Saturday and Sunday to make up for all the lost shopping Thursday and Friday.
Michelle Roy, proprietor of a new store on Palm Avenue called Pelindaba Lavender, mentioned the weather when we spoke earlier this week about holiday shopping. Her store, which opened in October, sells lavender-based gifts including oils, cooking supplies and pet products.
Business has been steadily increasing since the store opened, Roy said, and she expects the weekend to be really busy — especially since people probably stayed home Thursday and Friday.
“I would say the weather might dampen people’s spirits for the next couple of days, but I expect a pretty full weekend. It should stay on pace,” she said on Wednesday.
The unpredictable
Things come up that you can’t predict.
It turns out that online spending in Florida over Thanksgiving was so strong that the Florida Retail Federation was worried that December sales would suffer as a result. But so far, things are looking pretty good, president and CEO R. Scott Shalley said.
“We were worried about what the record high online spending during the Thanksgiving holiday stretch would mean for December, but with stores full of shoppers and millions of online orders being filled each day, it looks like our strong start may be met with an equally strong finish,” Shalley said.
By most indications so far, this has been a busy holiday shopping season. FRF’s position as of this week is that its initial prediction of a 4.5 percent increase will be met and possibly exceeded. The National Retail Federation, which tracks these sorts of things before, during and after the season, says that retail sales in November were up 0.7 percent seasonally adjusted from October, meaning spending is on track to meet the trade group’s projection that holiday sales will increase 4.3 percent to 4.8 percent.
UPS plans to deliver nearly 800 million packages from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve, and will almost double its normal daily deliveries on certain peak operating days. During its peak week — the week that started Dec. 17 — UPS expects to deliver an average of 35 million packages a day, or about 1 million packages a day more than last year. That includes “plenty of packages ordered from Amazon,” sustainability PR manager Kristen A. Petrella told me.
“This year’s forecasted volume is about 3.5 percent more than 2017’s holiday volume of 762 million packages. That’s about 38 million more packages than last year,” Petrella said.
Carol Osborne, an instructor in the University of South Florida’s Muma College of Business, said that reports about the holiday shopping season show a fairly normal season so far — some retailers are up, some are down. A lot of larger retailers are benefiting from their loyal customers — store credit card holders and the like — that are more likely to shop at their stores.
Waiting until the last minute to shop is a growing trend that Osborne said she thinks is caused by the oversaturation of deals, advertisements and the sheer amount of stuff presented to consumers during the holiday shopping season, which comes sooner and sooner every year.
“People do not know what to get people, it’s beyond what started out to be. It used to be a time of year to bring someone a cake, or knit someone a scarf ’cause they didn’t have it,” she said. “That was a special time. It would be, ‘This is the time of year I’m going to get the kids a toy.’ Now it’s just constant, people have so many things.”
Shoppers also know that if they miss a sale in early November, around Thanksgiving or two weeks before Christmas, there will probably be another one, she said.
Retail evolves
As far as Treat Boutique goes, things have started to pick up in the last week.
Since the business moved, their demographics have gotten substantially younger and the amount of the shop’s average sale has gone way up even as the number of transactions has decreased, Pepe-Dorn told me. Historically, Small Business Saturday has been a great year for the store, but this year Black Friday and the three days before Thanksgiving were killer, while Saturday was just okay.
The move probably has a lot to do with it, but so does the passage of time. Pepe-Dorn said she used to have a customer who would come in and buy a dress every weekend, but now, since she became pregnant, she hasn’t been coming in.
Life changes, routines change and retail evolves to reflect those changes.
“They’re not here buying a dress, maybe they’re at Pottery Barn buying a vase,” she said. “They’re somewhere spending dollars, just not here.”
Even with all the indeterminables, overall sales seem strong so far. And with roughly three shopping days left from the time you read this and Christmas, there’s still plenty of money to be made.
If I don’t see you out there at Target, or, who am I kidding, Sephora, I hope you have a happy holiday.
Laura Finaldi, the Herald-Tribune’s retail and tourism reporter, can be reached at 941-361-4951 or lfinaldi@heraldtribune.com. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @lauraefinaldi. Join her Sarasota-Manatee Retail News page on Facebook at facebook.com/groups/sarasotamanateeretail/.