Seasonal Merchants Thrive on Holidays

For the Christmas shopping season, the Northwest Arkansas Mall will have two new in-line stores and about a dozen additional kiosks and carts in the hallways.

The holiday season is a make-it-or-break-it time for many retailers, particularly so for shops that are open only during the season.

“This is a good jump start to see if this company is going to make it,” said Elizabeth Armstrong, who opened Mystic Gardens Bonsai in a cart at the mall Nov. 1.

If sales go well, Armstrong said, she may open a permanent shop after Christmas.

Spooky Sales Up

Nature’s Niche, a gift shop, and The Calendar Club are two new in-line stores that are to open in the mall in early November. In-line stores are in regular rental spaces at the mall; that is, they are in line with the other shops on both sides of the hallways.

The Halloween Boutique closed Nov. 1. If Halloween was any indication, retailers at the mall could be in for a good Christmas season. Cathryn Fetner of Springdale, who managed The Halloween Boutique, said sales were up this year by 10 to 20 percent over last year. That’s more than the company expected, but Fetner declined to release sales figures.

The Halloween Boutique is operated by Coach House Cards & Gifts, a corporate-owned store that Fetner manages in the mall. The Halloween Boutique was open for two months in the fall, the same period it was open last year.

Sharon Sherman said this was the third year in a row that she would operate Nature’s Niche as a seasonal in-line shop in the mall. For the past three years, Sherman owned and operated the Nature’s Niche store in Bella Vista year round, but she closed it in mid-October and won’t be reopening it.

For the past 21 years, Sherman has opened at least one store for the Christmas season in a mall some place. In addition to the Northwest Arkansas Mall, this year Sherman’s husband, Dan, is operating seasonal Nature’s Niche stores at malls in the Missouri cities of Joplin and Kansas City.

Going Mobile

They look similar, but there’s a difference between kiosks and carts. Kiosks are provided by merchants. Cart/retail mobile units are provided by the mall.

The mall usually has 10 to 15 kiosks and carts. During the holiday season, though, the shopping center is at its maximum with 18 carts and 6 kiosks.

The temporary units range from 5-by-6 SF to 10-by-15 SF each. Houndstooth Clothing Co. of Fayetteville keeps a kiosk open at the mall year-round. The company thrives on the concept, with kiosks in malls in nine cities — in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee — and only one retail store, in Fayetteville.

“It’s a model that’s working for us,” said Michael Baker, owner of Houndstooth, which is currently enjoying sales of more than $1 million annually and a 12 percent same-store sales increase this year. “We’re still fine-tuning it.”

Baker said most of Houndstooth’s mall kiosk sales takes place in the last six weeks of the year.

“The malls that we’re in year-round, we’ll do 40-60 percent of our sales from mid-November through December,” Baker said. “The kicker is that most of those sales … will come at full price, so your margin is healthy on them.”

Baker wouldn’t give numbers for the Northwest Arkansas Mall, but at the other malls where Houndstooth has kiosks, rent ranges from $8,000 to $20,000 for November and December combined. Baker said he has a year-round lease with the Northwest Arkansas Mall, so there’s not a dramatic increase in rent during the Christmas season.