Spotlight on Christmas The Business Picture at Year-Round Christmas Stores

How happy are the holidays? So happy that many Christmas stores across the United States operate year-round. For this article, shop staff and owners described how their cheer-giving business has changed due to the pandemic, and discussed their top display tips and current best-sellers.

At City Lights Collectibles in San Diego, Calif., Manager Brian Young said that business is currently “back to normal,” despite a seven-week closure when the pandemic began. “It’s been a slow build back up, but our online business is enormous anyway. We have a fiveman shipping department normally, but it grew during the pandemic.” Young noted that with a whopping 27,000 square feet of store space, concerns about limiting the number of in-store shoppers were virtually non-existent. “We could easily handle the guidelines of how many people could be in the store at any one time. We never had a problem there,” he attested.

Display is focused on a number of different styles. “We have 28 decorated trees, 72 ornament racks, 11 other displays, and a department consisting of 56 Villages that is 240 square feet all year.” Displays are created by two full-time in-store decorators and designers, and displays are changed up in full once annually, he said.

Best-sellers are “very seasonal,” Young reported. “During the actual Christmas season, our biggest sales are foliage, artificial trees, and décor. This time of year, we are more gift and collectibles, elves, angels, seashell ornaments, and ornaments that feature things like surfing, snorkeling, all the themes which appeal to tourists in our area.”

In Manteo, N.C., Patricia Lassen , manager of The Christmas Shop, has added additional shopping options for customers during the pandemic. “We added curbside pick-up and mail order options that can be easily done on our website,” she said. “We’re going to continue doing the mail order long-term, because that has done really well for us, and if people want curbside, we’ll definitely do that. We also use Facebook and Instagram to display our items more now than before the pandemic, she added. “We had a lot of Instagram Live videos up during the height of the pandemic, but we don’t use those as much now.”

Design and display are very important in the vast 30,000-square-foot The Christmas Shop. According to Lassen, “We all pretty much chip in, but our owner does a lot of display as does our assistant manager, Sheila Hinkle; they have a real flair for it. Our owner decorates all the trees.” She explained that the shop places some but not all ornaments on the trees, and the displays are changed in full approximately every six months. Best-sellers for the Continued on page 76