Dec 9, 2008

From wary to merryBy Geoff DaleLFPress.ca

While fiscal storm clouds may be signalling a less-than-festive sales season for many businesses, it appears local merchants such as Jonathon Bancroft-Snell aren’t anticipating lumps of coal in their stockings when Christmas figures are tallied up.

In fact, the owner of Canada’s largest contemporary Canadian ceramic art gallery says November was the best month the business has enjoyed since opening eight years ago.

“Our business is generally good year-round and Christmas usually accounts for about 30 per cent of our annual retail sales,” he explains.

“While we haven’t made any radical changes for this season, we did augment our ceramic art in November with exciting silver work and new paintings from young artists,” such as Ingersoll’s Shane Norrie.

He says the reason business is thriving, even during recessionary times, is because the gallery sells only Canadian works, which consumers from Southwestern Ontario, other parts of Canada and the U.S. appreciate.

Despite the doom-and-gloom scenario garnering so much media attention, it seems his kind of guarded optimism is the rule rather than the exception among business owners across London and area.

Though many admit there is widespread concern about economic downturns throughout the sector, they say attacking the prospect of lower sales with renewed vigour and applying inventive ideas along the way is winning the day so far.

“Our approach this season is really the one we hang our hats on throughout the year,” says Janette MacDonald, general manager of Main Street London. “We’ve kept things very upbeat, adding things like a holiday window contest, a seminar on how to decorate those windows and, of course, awards.

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