By LESTER CHANG
Santa was good to some stores and not so good to others at the Sunnyvale Town Center--the largest shopping complex in Sunnyvale--during the holiday shopping season.
Some stores did well, but many reported mediocre sales due in part to cautious spending by customers and public concerns about the loss of jobs due to downsizing of corporations in Silicon Valley.
"If you go around the shopping center, most of the merchants will tell you that they did 'just OK,' " said one merchant who asked not to be identified. "It wasn't what we wanted, but it is what we got." The center has more than 60 stores.
James Wiggins, manager of Jarman Shoe Store, went into the Christmas season with anxiety.
"We have a valley of engineers, and they would be inclined to buy a computer or a cellular [phone] than a pair of shoes," Wiggins said.
Shoppers spent their money guardedly, he said. "The past couple of years, people spent frivolously, and they are cutting back now. It has caught up with them," he said.
Martha Herrera, a salesperson at Gold and More jewelry store, said sales were dismal.
"People don't want to buy jewelry anymore, " she said. "We offered discounts, but they didn't work."
Sid Copeland, owner of Sid's Sunnyvale Antique and Collectibles, noted with a frown that he had "very few sales over $100."
"Business was just all right," he said. "People were cautious about what they bought. A lot of the time I had to discount things, and my prices are the lowest in the valley."
Heavy shopping in the week before Christmas Day turned things around for the Footlocker store, said manager Derrick Robinson. "The week before that, it seemed like a regular week, not even Christmas." During the week before Christmas Day, the store rebounded with up to $17,000 in sales, Robinson said. The store sells up to $11,000 in shoes during a regular week.
The chain store wouldn't have done so well if it hadn't offered discount or advertised in national publications.
"Christmas helped, but unlike [other] stores, we weren't going to rely on it to make our yearly target projections [of $700,000]," he said. "We hope to do that in the next two weeks."
Faith Denison, manager of the Ups & Down clothes store, said her store "did OK" but only because she offered discounts and had repeat business.
"If our old customers hadn't come back, our Christmas definitely wouldn't be as good," she said. "Business was steady throughout the Christmas season, but things picked up a week before Christmas. That saved us."
Harjeet Sandhu, owner of H B Toys, said his business sold more than $100,000 in goods for the entire year of 1995, but failed to exceed that figure this year.
"I put in more inventory and advertised, but things didn't work out," he said. "People were cautious about buying. They checked prices elsewhere, like Toys R Us, and then they would come back here if the price was right."
To encourage people to buy at his store, Sandhu gave away toys for purchases that exceeded $50 and more.
While other merchants complained about not making sales projections for the year, Expressly Portraits didn't have that problem. It had sales that were 25 percent higher than last year, due in part to better management of the store, said Ted Bundesen, a senior assistant with the store.
"It has been the best time of the year," Bundesen said. "We did 60 percent of our business during the Christmas season."
Jena McKenzie, manger at Northern Reflections, a clothes store for women and men, also had lots to be happy about. The store had about $300,000 in sales last year, and "we beat it this time," she said.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, January 8, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.