‘Shop Santa Monica’ pays off for some local businesses
The holiday shopping season is getting mixed reviews from area businesses, who had hoped the local economy — ravaged by slumping sales and tourism — would rebound under a consumerism frenzy.
Local business organizations and the City of Santa Monica spent about $118,000 on a “Shop Santa Monica” advertising campaign intended to keep residents buying locally. The ads appeared everywhere from cable television to city buses; from local newspapers to bumper stickers on all municipal vehicles; from flyers to citywide mailers.
Though officials say it would be nearly impossible to gauge how effective the advertising campaign has been, city employees said they will discover how good or bad the season was when the sales tax revenues are fully received in a few weeks.
“The city won’t have any financial information for a while. Sales tax revenue takes a while to come in and be analyzed,” said Judy Rambeau, city spokesperson. “Any information we could give now would be purely anecdotal.”
Chamber of Commerce officials agree, saying more time is needed before any financial data will be available.
“We don’t know for sure just yet, but there were a lot of people on the streets and in the shops,” said Kathy Dodson, executive director of Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce. “So that means the anecdotal evidence is at least good.”
Business owners said sales were down drastically this season, even though many had not finished crunching their sales numbers.
“This season was a lot of small sales instead of larger ones. Our biggest problem this year was with confusing signs at the parking garage,” said Marie Scott, owner of Art One located on the Third Street Promenade. “Usually at Christmastime we do a lot of large sales. This year it was mostly little, inexpensive items.”
Scott said most of her holiday customers this year were tourists, and she doesn’t think the advertising campaign brought in a lot of business to her store.
“Maybe they went to the malls. Maybe they didn’t want to buy art,” said Scott. “There were a lot of people on the Promenade, just not in my shop.”
At Shiva Imports, also located on the Promenade, local residents did most of the buying, leaving the shop’s owner wondering where all the tourists went.
“Last year after the Rose Bowl a lot of people were walking around after the parade,” said shop owner Naren Patel. “This year they never showed up.”
And Patel said the tourists that did show up were afraid to buy metal items out of fear of having them taken away at airport security checkpoints.
“When people did buy they always wanted to know if they can get it through security,” he said. “Many of our ornaments were very popular but they have some sharp edges and people didn’t know if they could take them home (on an airplane).”
Patel said overall sales at his Indian-themed knickknacks store were “very unimpressive” this season, and predicted trends would not improve until the end of February.
“Unemployment is very high and people are afraid to spend money right now,” he said. “But things are starting to change, mostly from government work and construction contracts with the federal government.”
While sales at The Candy Baron didn’t improve, they weren’t far off from previous years. At all three store locations around the Los Angeles area, sales remained at past seasonal levels.
“All our stores stayed busy. We’re always busy. When all the numbers are in, we may even be up a little,” said Promenade store manager Mandy Fuentes.
Even with good sales this season, the Candy Baron still plans to move off The Promenade to a new location on Santa Monica Boulevard by the middle of the month.
“This whole September 11th thing really didn’t hurt us too much,” she said. “Maybe it’s because we’re a comfort food or an impulse buy, but people still bought candy.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 3, 2002. Read the original PDF.