Southwestern Ohio shoppers did their part to support the national trend. Foot traffic was up 8 percent over last year at the Dayton Mall during the four-day weekend that included “Black Friday,” said Dave Duebber, general manager of the Dayton Mall in Miami Twp. Store managers told mall officials that sales were up over last year and also exceeded Black Friday weekend projections for this year, Duebber said.
“Friday night, this place was just wall-to-wall with shoppers,” Duebber said. “All of the retailers have been wearing big smiles.”
At the Upper Valley Mall in Springfield, which opened fully at midnight Thursday as did several other large shopping malls in the region, shoppers arrived well before individual stores were scheduled to open.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” said Carla Miller, the Springfield mall’s director of marketing and business development. “And I’ve been here 13 years.”
Trisha Hale, general manager of the Towne Mall in Middletown, said customers lined up to await a Sears store opening at 8 p.m. Thursday, and other stores in her retail center reported larger crowds and stronger sales this year compared to 2011.
At the Cincinnati Premium Outlets in Monroe, “We were pleased with Black Friday and the weekend in total,” said Lewis Taulbee, the outlet center’s general manager. “Throughout the weekend traffic was strong … . We’re looking to forward to the weeks to come and the fact that we have extra days this year for holiday shopping.”
Customer traffic at The Greene Town Center in Beavercreek is trending up “into the double digits — an increase over already outstanding traffic numbers from last year,” said Steve Willshaw, general manager of the center. “Though merchant sales are not fully reported, initial feedback has indicated double digit sales increases in stores throughout the center.”
Savvy shoppers still appeared to have plenty of appetite for one-day-only deals that retailers lined up for Cyber Monday, when 129.2 million shoppers said they would head to retailers’ websites, according to a survey conducted for Shop.org. That was up from 122.8 million who shopped online for Cyber Monday deals last year and from the 106.9 million who shopped on Cyber Monday in 2010. The NRF said 85 percent of retailers offered some type of special promotion for Cyber Monday.
The Dayton Mall’s Duebber said based on the prices and deals he saw at his mall’s stores during the four-day Thanksgiving weekend, “A lot of our retailers are trying to be very, very competitive with Cyber Monday sales.”
Whether sales occurred at bricks-and-mortar stores or online, the robust start to the holiday shopping season is a big boost for retailers, which can make up to 40 percent of their annual revenue in November and December. And it’s also good news for manufacturers that will be called upon to replace the items sold last weekend, and for state and local governments that collect sales taxes on the transactions.
Gordon Gough, executive vice president of the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants, said retailers are optimistic that the strong start for holiday sales will continue, in part because unemployment rates are dropping, and because consumers have been paying down their debt in recent years. “That has freed up some discretionary spending dollars for Ohio consumers,” Gough said.
The University of Cincinnati Economics Center projects a 4.2 percent increase in retail spending in November and December in Ohio, and a 3.9 percent increase in the Dayton area.
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