Signs of hope among city retailers

THINKING SMALL: Liv Jasmine, left, and her mother, Josephine Curry of Cranston, shop at Frog & Toad on Hope Street in Providence on Small Business Saturday in 2016. / PBN FILE PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
THINKING SMALL: Liv Jasmine, left, and her mother, Josephine Curry of Cranston, shop at Frog & Toad on Hope Street in Providence on Small Business Saturday in 2016. / PBN FILE PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

Despite a sluggish start to holiday-season spending, some local business owners have seen solid increases in sales, giving weight to a recent survey placing Providence in the top 20 best local shopping destinations in the country.
Yelp, a mobile app that crowdsources reviews about local business, released a survey on the best places to shop locally last month and the Ocean State’s capital city ranked No. 18. Frog and Toad, a gift shop on Hope Street, was named one of Yelp’s “destination” establishments.
Asher Schofield, who owns the shop with his wife, Erin, says shopping the weekend after Thanksgiving showed an increase this year. He thinks customer confidence has finally returned since the Great Recession.
“I feel like we’ve emerged from the economic downturn,” Schofield said. “I feel like consumer confidence is really high right now, which makes me feel good about the state of economic affairs out there.”
Providence’s local shopping theme is resonating with other business owners, including Dixie Carroll, who hadn’t heard about the Yelp ranking, but was surprised Providence didn’t rank higher.
“People really try to support and reward local businesses in Providence,” said Carroll, who owns women’s clothing store J Marcel, at 808 Hope St., with her husband, Bill Jette. The couple started this holiday season off with a bang, seeing a 50 percent increase over last year’s sales in the weekend following Thanksgiving.
J Marcel was one of several Hope Street businesses to participate in Small Business Saturday, a nationally recognized day when people are encouraged to shop locally.
“In comparison, in terms of sales in dollars, we are dramatically up from years past,” Carroll said, adding that they’ve owned the store for more than six years.
The couple does about 20 percent to 25 percent of its yearly selling in December.
An estimated eight in 10 Americans are likely to shop at local businesses this holiday season, according to the Yelp survey, which was conducted in conjunction with Nielsen, an information and measurement company. The survey was based on an analysis done on millions of Yelp reviews and business listings. It determined which U.S. cities had the most highly rated, local businesses where shoppers could find “great gifts,” according to the survey.
Jette said they were seeing new faces around their shop and even some people who traveled into Providence to check out some of Hope Street’s eclectic shops.
“I think that [Providence] is really getting a lot of attention,” Jette said. “The feedback has been really good from our regular customers and those who were first-timers.”
Neighboring Hope Street shop owners told Jette they were also seeing an increase in sales, but he couldn’t tell whether it would be sustained throughout the shopping season.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Jette said the Monday following Small Business Saturday. “We had a really good Sunday as well, so I don’t know if that was residual for the weekend and we’ll see that continue, or if we’ll see a dip and end up like the rest of the retailers. … If the [customers’] experience was good, and they enjoyed themselves, we might see that play out for the rest of the year.”
The highly successful start seen on Hope Street, however, isn’t reflective of what many retailers experienced in the city, state or nation.
Rob Luzzi, co-owner of Sports And More!, a first-floor sports memorabilia store in Providence Place mall, says he was puzzled by his slow start. The holiday season is crucial for Luzzi, who does nearly 60 percent of his yearly sales in December alone.
“I’m a little baffled as to how and why we’re down for the entire weekend from last year,” Luzzi said, referring to the weekend after Thanksgiving. “The first weekend resulted in a decline for sales, but maybe it’s just because it was the first weekend and people are doing door-busters shopping, or shopping online, and eventually they’ll come in.” Sports And More! is one of the few small, independently owned retailers in the Providence mall and Luzzi, who owns the store with his brother Mike Luzzi, says they’re busiest in the days immediately preceding Christmas. He doesn’t know what to expect this year.
“It’s hard to predict how it will be going forward because of how it started,” Luzzi said.
Luzzi’s slow start is indicative of nationwide trends. Holiday spending nationally fell about 11 percent, to $50.9 billion from Thanksgiving through Sunday, Nov. 30, compared with $57.4 billion the previous year, according to the National Retail Federation, which did not have specific data for Rhode Island.
The NRF is predicting a 4.1 percent sales increase nationwide for November and December, which would be the country’s best performance since 2011, but Paul DeRoche, director of the Rhode Island Retail Federation, says it will be less in Rhode Island.
Prior to Thanksgiving weekend, DeRoche predicted a 4 percent to 5 percent increase for Rhode Island holiday sales, but adjusted his prediction to 2.5 percent to 3 percent “at the most” after the slow start.
The poor start is putting additional pressure on retailers to entice shoppers’ business in the final weeks of the holiday season.
“I really think the consumer has had enough with the Black Friday madness,” said DeRoche. “The big-box retailers are going to start cutting prices to get the consumers back into the stores.”
Bob Clayton, Macy’s vice president and store manager at Providence Place, is optimistic about the holiday season and expects customer levels to be higher again for the fifth consecutive year.
“We feel good about it. We’re excited about our assortment of merchandise, and our customers seem to be happy, while our sale associates are having fun,” Clayton said.
Yelp also named Providence Place, with its mix of national and regional retailers, as a “destination” shopping site, and Mark Dunbar, mall senior general manager, said he was happy to see it. He hasn’t noticed an increase in the amount of shoppers yet, but thinks they have a different attitude this year. “It appears customer confidence is higher,” Dunbar said. “Customers are coming in motivated to buy, which I think is different than years past.”
Dunbar declined to comment on the mall’s occupancy rate.
DeRoche, however, doesn’t think the Yelp ranking will have much of an effect on consumer behavior, or retail promotion. And he disagreed with Frog and Toad’s Schofield, saying the lagging economy is still playing a part in consumer behavior.
“The recession isn’t over, and we still have a lot of people out of jobs. There’s no growth in our state and because of that reason people are being more conservative with [their spending],” DeRoche said. “If we talk Dec. 26, it might be a different ball game.”
But Schofield, who employs four full-time employees and two more part time on Hope Street, and other city retailers remain optimistic. Schofield sees an increasing amount of customers “shopping local” in Providence, which until recently was just an idea he’d heard in theory.
“I have people coming in and asking what we have that’s local and handcrafted, versus the ‘factory in China’ production,” Schofield said. “It’s funny because we’ve heard messaging on this for ages, and I’ve certainly been practicing it, but it feels like for the first time I really see that it’s resonating.”
Shoppe Pioneer, a women’s clothing and fashion store at 253 South Main St., was also named as one of Yelp’s destination stores. Although she hadn’t seen the survey, owner Natalie Morello says she saw a boost in sales on Black Friday and that Small Business Saturday was comparable to last year.
She says her customers seem more confident and are spending a little more money this year. She looks forward to the holiday season’s final push.
“I feel like it’s going to get really crazy,” Morello said. •

No posts to display