Danbury-area retailers find Christmas sales mixed
If you run the kind of business where customers enjoy a therapeutic massage or get excited at the sight of a rawhide chew toy, you may not have fared too badly this Christmas season.
But if your livelihood depended on selling music CDs or minerals and crystals, you are probably singing a different tune.
Customer traffic during Christmas week fell 4.9 percent nationally this year compared to 2007, according to ShopperTrak, a Chicago-based research company that tracks retail sales. While final figures won’t be ready until the middle of the month, preliminary indications are 16 percent fewer shoppers went to stores and malls during the just-completed holiday season, and that retail sales were down some 2.3 percent, the company reported.
A random survey of businesses in the Danbury area seemed to bear out the national figures.
While some stores, especially those selling sporting goods and pet supplies, said they were busy, other retailers reported a continuation of the downward trend that began months ago.
“The whole year was very slow, but our Christmas sales this year were half of last year’s,” said Leslie Gera, owner of Mother Earth Gallery and Mining in Brookfield. “Sales were pretty much down across the board. People were still shopping, but they were spending less.”
Adding to the overall malaise, they said, was bad weather during the week before Christmas, which reduced the number of last minute shoppers rushing out to purchase gifts. “Sales were down,” said Dennis Esposito, co-owner of Disc & Dat in Bethel, who moved his music CD, used record and movie poster business from Stamford eight years ago to take advantage of lower overhead costs. “It was kind of disappointing, but it’s something that I anticipated, so I ordered less.”
