While back-to-school shopping is expected to jump 5 percent nationally as consumers rebound from a year of post-recession cautionary spending, some retailers in Fairfield County are experiencing a lull or even a complete halt to business during what should be one of their busiest seasons. As with many former givens, the Web is rescripting the way families shop for school.
The National Retail Federation recently surveyed 6,178 consumers from July 1-8 and reported the behavior and shopping trends of parents of K-12 and college students. Mobile shopping made up 22 percent of buying activity, up from 18 percent last year, the report showed. Despite the uptick of e-commerce sales by smaller retailers, the mobile shift has hurt some small local businesses.
Max”™s Art Supplies at 68 Post Road in Westport is going out of business at the end of August. The store, which has been operating for 59 years, belonged to Max Kaplan, who died in 1984. Shirley Mellor, the 86-year-old store owner who had dated Kaplan since 1969 and took over after he died, said his business always supported the local art community. As Mellor pointed to a black-and-white photograph on the wall of her office, which takes up a small space in the back corner of the nearly empty art supply store, she said one of the reasons the business has been around for so long is because it had many loyal customers. She said many of them have now turned to online shopping to meet their art supply needs.
Over the past 20 years, the number of visits by architects and design professionals, who are the primary sources of business for the store, had been dwindling, Mellor said.
“We started losing them and technology was a big reason for it,” Mellor said. “Then our designers, who are our second largest income base, started learning software programs and that trickled down to the students who do everything by computer in the classroom.”
With back-to-school supply lists requiring fewer paints, pastels and drawing boards and more software programs, the art supply store is down to its last 1 percent of its inventory. The store doesn”™t have an online presence.
“We gradually eliminated our backup supply and kept just our inventories on the racks,” said Nina Royce, store manager. “It doesn”™t do us any good if people can order online and businesses can sell for less. We”™re going to miss the back-to-school wave altogether. As opposed to being a destination place for back to school, it”™s been just the opposite.”
The retail federation report showed that parents will spend an average of $670 for their kindergarten through 12th-grade students and take advantage of online shopping and coupons to make those purchases. Nationally, teenagers will spend $913 million on their own. They seem to prefer smaller outlets and the Web to discount and department stores.
This year, fewer parents will take advantage of early summer deals. One in 5 parents will still shop at least two months before school starts, but teens will most likely want to gauge fashion trends after school starts and ask their parents to take them back to the stores, the survey showed.
Wiggles & Giggles, a fashion-forward children”™s clothing store in Darien, can attest to this as business is at a lull. Store sales associate Maggie Murphy said she hasn”™t seen sales pick up for back-to-school shopping.
“Around this time of year, it”™s big for people in our area to go away on vacation and do last-minute back-to-school shopping,” Murphy said. “We have dressier items for the fall, including designs by Rachel Riley, who makes some of the stuff Prince George wears.”
As the summer season comes to an end, Murphy said the store is filling its racks with fall clothes, including warmer dresses, turtlenecks and button-down shirts for kids. She said she just put out back-to-school gear, including backpacks, lunchboxes and duffel bags.
