Local stores report brisk sales in after Christmas rush

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

By Steve Moyer

Nevada Daily Mail

Christmas has come and gone as it does every year and each year the week after Christmas is as busy as the week before.

Sometimes it's people returning that sweater that doesn't fit or that blouse in a shade of blue you just wouldn't get caught dead wearing, but for many people in the stores it's the bargains that spurred that extra shopping trip.

"There's a lot of sales this week," Steve Knowles, owner of Sears, said. "With returns this will finish out the Christmas season."

Big-ticket items seemed to be more popular this year. "We did pretty good," Knowles said. "We sold less small stuff and more large stuff. We sold fewer items but more expensive ones so it worked out well for us."

Gift cards, as opposed to gift certificates, seemed to be popular as well.

"We sold a lot of gift cards," Knowles said. "We're hoping we'll see them in here this week. They're popular because they don't expire, you can use them in any Sears store and they're easy to send. Of course," Knowles said. "We hope they spend them in our store."

Ed Robinson, EMS Hunting and Fishing said this year was on a par with others when his store was in California.

"I would say it was an average year," Robinson said. "This is my first year here so I'm not sure what an average year here would be."

Robinson also has a Web store and sales by that method were good.

"We get a lot of business over the Internet," Robinson said. "Sales were strong this year."

For Robinson hunting season, in addition to Christmas, was a busy time of year.

"We sold a lot of rifles during hunting season," Robinson said. "It died down for awhile then picked up again for Christmas. Our big week was the one just before Christmas."

Robinson said he too switched over to selling gift cards and preferred them to gift certificates.

"I only sold about a dozen gift cards," Robinson said. "I used to do gift certificates and you had to worry about refunds with them. Gift cards are better for businessmen, they're easier to handle."

Blake Hertzberg, Hertzberg Furniture said that all things considered business was up this year.

"Generally things are up this year," Hertzberg said. "It's definitely been a better year for us."

The furniture store saw a mix in the types of merchandise sold.

"We sold some big-ticket items but we sold plenty of the smaller items too," Hertzberg said.

So far Hertzberg Furniture has resisted the change to gift cards and still uses gift certificates.

"Yes, we're still using the old fashioned paper ones," Hertzberg said. "It's somewhat updated, we have the information in the computer so we have records of it and we can track them."

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