by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
With the holiday season right around the corner, downtown merchants are beginning to gear up for what they consider to be the most wonderful time of the year.
Several store owners on Laura Street say they have already seen increases in customers and sales even though the true shopping rush won’t start until after Thanksgiving. At Tiara, a women’s shoes, accessories and jewelry boutique on Laura Street, owner Maria Jones said that because shoes aren’t a typical item to give as a gift, she has increased her non-shoe inventory for gift seekers. She said she has also experienced an increase in customers over the past few weeks.
Greg Vaccaro, owner and master cobbler at Gus and Co., a shoe repair shop and custom baggage store on Laura Street near the new library, said he too has seen an influx of customers. Though he has sold a few more of his luxury Vaccaro line bags recently, he said the colder weather is really what has brought the customers in. Now that the season has changed, Vaccaro said many people are changing their type of footwear, which means more shoes and boots long overdue for a good shoe shine and repairs.
Several of the shops at the Landing also are beefing up inventories in preparation for the holiday shopping spree. William Pease, manager of Book Liquidators, said 10 pallets carrying about 5,000 new books recently arrived at the store. He said the store has really bulked up on children’s books and cookbooks as well as coffee table readers, all items that are traditionally big sellers during the holidays. The book shop has also rearranged some of its displays to coincide with the shopping season.
Just around the corner from the bookstore is Edgewater Treasures, a collectibles and trinket boutique at the Landing. Manager John Robinson said he hasn’t felt a surge of customers yet but he knows they will soon be coming.
“It hasn’t gotten cold outside yet,” he said. “That is the thing that tells them that Christmas is coming.”
Robinson, who has been working at Edgewater Treasures for the past 10 years, said colder weather always tends to get people shopping but added that there are two other events that always get customers in the shopping mood.
“We really won’t start getting a crowd until after the lighting of the Christmas tree at the Landing and the boat parade,” he said. “That is our kickoff for the Christmas shopping season.”
One merchant really looking forward to this season’s kickoff is Doug Ganson, owner of Sundrez. In September, Ganson moved his shop across the hall into a bigger space at the Landing and transformed his convenience store into a gift and card shop.
Though it is still early November, Ganson has already decorated his storefront with images of holly and Christmas trees. Because the store is new, one of Ganson’s biggest hopes is that this shopping season will put him on the map of places to shop downtown.
“It has been so long since there has been a card and gift store downtown,” he said. “We are basically trying to create as much visibility and awareness of the store as possible.”
Besides his holiday decorations, Ganson has loaded the store with holiday-specific gifts such as ornaments, candles and figurines but has also started packaging his regular items, like cigars, as gifts for the holidays.
“We also have sample packs of cigars ready,” he said. “For 11 months out of the year we market our cigars to men, this month we market them to women as gifts for men.”