[natural sound: people inside a department store]
Thanksgiving hasn’t come around yet, and neither has Halloween. But some people are already figuring out what gifts to buy for the holiday season.
Michaela Dix is a co-manager of the nonprofit store Ten Thousand Villages. Recently, she’s noticed some changes in shopping patterns.
DIX: We typically see a lot of our sales coming through in November and December, December being the strongest month. Last year, I would say we saw a little bit of a different trend, where we had a lot more holiday shopping that was happening in October. And I feel like we were seeing a little bit of some of the echoes of people worrying about supply and demand from previous years.
Construction near Dix’s store may be contributing to slightly lower sales this October, but sales numbers still looked promising.
MD: We’re still bouncing back from our pre-COVID sales numbers a little bit, but it’s been picking back up. We’ve been stronger.
For some shoppers, like retired teacher Elizabeth Chambers, the holiday gift search is a year-round process.
CHAMBERS: I’m a firm believer in never paying full price for anything, especially a gift for someone else or a present for myself. So I start shopping as soon as Christmas is over, like December 26. I’m already in the stores looking for markdowns.
Carnegie Mellon senior Sam Rauch began shopping ahead after one particularly memorable experience.
RAUCH: I was in the Russell Stover Chocolate outlet shop with my family. We were on vacation. My mom loves chocolate, and we were looking around the shop, and they had these umbrellas that had, like, a chocolate pattern on them. And my dad was like, you know, that’d be perfect for her birthday, but it’s not for another month. And then we did this whole “Mission: Impossible” scenario to hide the umbrella in the car so she wouldn’t see it. But it occurred to me that I could just get things ahead of time, you know, when you’re out and about and you see something. So I was like, you know what? Yeah, I can be “Mission: Impossible.” I can start doing this myself.
In a 2023 forecast, the International Council of Shopping Centers found that the vast majority of consumers plan to start their holiday shopping earlier than normal. Many businesses, including Dix’s, have adjusted accordingly.
MD: We really try to start stocking pretty heavily for just extra inventory and our holiday items around September, October. And we’ve really started trying to put out at least some of our holiday a little more in the back of the store beginning of October for people that do want to shop early.
Many businesses have also expanded beyond shopping holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, offering more deals throughout the year. Walmart, Target, Amazon and other major retailers held some of these sales earlier in October.
But Chambers doesn’t limit herself to these sales.
EC: I’ve been to Amazon, Temu, all of those online shops, but I really do love still brick-and-mortar stores. So I’ve been to the mall that’s closest to me, which is River Oaks Mall, but I also shop at Ford City Mall, Orland Park, Chicago Ridge. So there’s no store that I’m allergic to.
Not everyone plans this far in advance. Weinberg freshman Madeline Conter is one person who doesn’t rush into her holiday shopping.
CONTER: Generally I don’t really start until after school ends, only because with finals and everything, generally I’m kind of stressed like in the Thanksgiving to end-of-school bracket of time.
But for people like Chambers, shopping year-round does have its benefits.
EC: I think the key is to go often, because if you try to do it just all in one day, it’s exhausting, and you really don’t get the best deals because you’re just tired, you just want something. So the key is to go early, go often, and then you have the best deals. You have the best gifts that are appropriate for the person and they won’t wanna take it back or regift it.
[music: “Jingle Bells”]
For WNUR News, I’m Edward Simon Cruz.
Music Credit:
Department store sounds by Pixabay
“Jingle Bells Orchestra” by Grand Project
