Holiday Buying Begins With Little Cheer

Despite President Bush’s best efforts to lead a parade of consumers to the nation’s malls, Friday’s traditional post-Thanksgiving kickoff to the holiday shopping season was remarkably slow and stingy, particularly in Southern California, once considered a protected retail Mecca.

At malls from West Covina to Ventura to San Diego, shoppers reported that they plan to scale back their holiday budgets and concentrate whatever purchases they make on necessities. Baking is back, cards are replacing gifts, cash is more popular than credit, and deep discounts are the order of the day.

Large numbers of retailers across the country tried for the first time Friday to lure shoppers out of bed with widespread “early bird” specials, but even that didn’t spur the kind of response that they had hoped for. Some stores opened at 5 a.m. in Atlanta, 7 a.m. in Los Angeles and 8 a.m. in San Francisco.

At the Payless shoe store in the Crenshaw Plaza in Baldwin Hills, Adassa Sinclair was buying winter boots for her four grandchildren to wear to school--not the toys that she purchased last year.

Some consumers, like Kathy and Bob Booker of West Covina, weren’t buying anything. While the Bookers, who both lost their jobs this year, and their five children still made their annual pilgrimage to the Plaza in West Covina, they didn’t go there to shop; they went only to see Santa Claus.

Pointing to her 5-year-old daughter, Kathy Booker whispered: “She wants a B-I-K-E and I can’t buy it for her.”

Bush and his wife, Barbara, drew throngs of startled shoppers during a visit to a mall in Frederick, Md., where he paid cash for toys and some sporting goods at a J.C. Penney store.

Retailers and analysts said the opening day of the holiday shopping season only reinforced earlier predictions that the nation is in for another Scrooge-like Christmas, with consumers fearfully hoarding their cash rather than following Bush’s pleas for a consumer-led exodus from the country’s economic woes.

Kenneth A. Macke, chairman of Dayton Hudson Corp., which operates Target and Mervyn’s stores among others, said he expects to do no better this Christmas than last year and that nothing is changing his mind about that.

“The consumer is very value-smart,” Macke said. “They’re trying to lower their risk as much as possible.” Some, he suggests, are holding out, awaiting even deeper discounts than those already in the stores.

In its most recent survey released Friday, the Conference Board reported that the American household is expected to spend $375 on Christmas gifts this year, down from $395 last year. The private business research group said 1991 Christmas sales are expected to be close to $36 billion, about 3% less than last year--and a far cry below the typical good year, in which sales rise from 6% to 10% over the previous year.

“Nothing we’ve seen so far changes what we have been saying will happen this Christmas,” said Richard Giss, a retailing specialist for the accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche in Los Angeles. “We are off to a very slow start.”

As had been expected, business was most brisk Friday at discount and lower-priced outlets, while upscale department and fashion stores, which prospered in the 1980s, were suffering.

“Last year, it was department stores. This year, I’m a K mart shopper,” said Kim Applegate of San Diego as she browsed in one of the city’s K mart stores. “This year, I’m more broke and I have more people to shop for.”

At a Target store in Northridge, where row upon row of items--from electronic goods to toys to gift wrap--were on sale, about 100 shoppers were waiting outside the doors for the 7 a.m. opening. By 9 a.m., the lot was full and all the shopping carts were in use.

An Irvine woman, Elizabeth Balsamo, said she comes out for the post-Thanksgiving shopping every year, but this year more to browse than buy. “We’re not going to be buying any big-ticket items. I’ve already cut down on my Christmas list,” she said.

At the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, which serves the region’s primary aerospace employment center, merchants said the cash registers were not as full as they ought to be, in part because of the large number of layoffs at nearby defense plants.

“The prevailing economic environment is less positive than last year at this time. Gross national product is marginally lower, the unemployment rate is higher and consumers are less confident about the present state of the economy,” said Fabian Linden, executive director of the Conference Board’s Consumer Research Center.

Shoppers also reported a decided reluctance to use credit cards, preferring to pay cash rather than increase their debts at a time of uncertainity about their jobs and the economy.

It was no different across the nation.

In Atlanta, Wal-Mart stores opened at 5 a.m. with a four-hour “Early Bird Christmas Blitz One Day Extravaganza” featuring a Murray 20-inch bicycle for $45 rather than the $54.97 regular price. There were even boxes of doughnuts to greet the early risers.

At Bloomingdale’s in Manhattan, where shoppers normally vie for empty cabs, the situation was reversed; hungry cabdrivers circled the block hunting for passengers.

In Denver, Carolyn Bayliss, 49, said worries about her job are dictating how she spends the holiday season. A program security analyst at defense contractor Martin Marietta, Bayliss confided that she expects to shop at thrift stores for her grandchildren--and then wrap the secondhand clothing “just like they’re new.”

Even those who say they haven’t yet been hit by the weak economy were paying close attention to prices Friday. Some hoped poor retail sales would force discounted prices down even further.

“You see this ‘ 1/2 off’ sign? It’s going to be 75% off soon,” said Covina resident Kenneth Elston, 33, explaining why he and his wife, Dorienne, were merely window shopping at the West Covina mall.

Bob Libby, owner of Sandy Lane, a women’s clothing store in The Oaks Mall in Thousand Oaks, said customers are being more selective. “The things we sold last year for regular price are on sale because customers demand it,” Libby said.

At South Plaza in Costa Mesa, with the largest sales in the West, business was booming Friday. Veteran shoppers and clerks said it looked as busy, or busier, than last year. But even amid the Cartier and Tiffany’s and Giorgio’s, the thrifty ways of this year’s consumers appeared to be the rule.

Even for the Salvation Army. Outside the Sears store in Santa Monica, volunteer Lynda Elizabeth Shough jingled her bell incessantly trying to rouse donations for the destitute.

“Money is a whole lot tighter,” she said. Instead of contributing $5, she added, “People are dropping 50 cents this year.”

The following Times staff writers contributed to this story: Patrice Apodaca, Ron Russell, David Haldane, Kim Kowsky, Kevin Cullinane, Irene Chang, Marc Lacey, Jeffrey L. Rabin, Jesus Sanchez, Nancy Rivera Brooks, Stuart Silverstein, Chris Woodyard, Adrianne Goodman and Chris Kraul in Southern California; Victor Zonana in New York; Ann Rovin in Denver; Edith Stanley in Atlanta; Lazzareschi reported from San Francisco.