“In this area, Bell County and Central Texas, we really haven’t seen an impact as much as the rest of the country has,” said Rigo Garcia, Target store manager in Temple. “We haven’t seen as much of a decline.”
Since this will be the Temple Target’s first Christmas, the store is basing its projections off Target in Georgetown.
“We think of Georgetown as still a country town, more remote like Temple,” Garcia said.
Garcia said the Target in Georgetown is beating last year’s sales by 19 percent.
“People still need their Pampers. They still need their sodas. They still need a sweater,” Garcia said. “We feel in Central Texas the guests are going to shop and have a successful Christmas.”
To tame the masses anticipated to shop during the holiday season, Garcia expects to hire 30 percent more employees.
The first batch of holiday workers was brought in to begin training in mid-October. Garcia plans to have the remaining half hired before Thanksgiving.
“We’re hoping to be fully staffed for the holiday season,” Garcia said.
Even as sales are anticipated to drop this holiday season, Target in Temple is hovering above the average number of employees hired by fellow stores.
Garcia said he knows the store will need all the help it can get once Black Friday hits.
“We’re a pretty crazy store at the holidays,” Garcia said.
Target isn’t the only store hustling and bustling with extra help through the holidays.
Temple Mall sees a traffic increase of 50 percent, and it starts picking up as early as the second week of November.
Lisa Perez, Temple Mall marketing director, said Black Friday is what kicks off seasonal shopping.
“This year, it leaves customers about five weeks to get all of their holiday shopping if they start on that Friday,” Perez said. “Between those times, our gift card sales increase 50 to 75 percent just in those two months.”
As far as holiday spending goes, Perez believes history will repeat itself in the county.
“In the past, whenever they predicted a recession or lack of purchasing by holiday shoppers, our customers and consumers are still purchasing,” Perez said.
Perez said she has also seen a number of job postings for seasonal help spread across the mall, indicating vendors expect big sales as well.
Talk of slow holiday sales hasn’t even made Katherine Kate blink when it comes to the possibility of hiring fewer people for the holidays.
As store manager for Dillards in Temple, she aid the store has no plans for reductions.
“Our hiring is based on our customers service needs,” Kate said. “We’re going to hire based on the servicing of our customers.”
“As customers need help, we’re here,” Kate said.
She said the store typically hires 10 seasonal employees and the same applies this year.
Dillards began hiring during the last week of October and employees will work through Jan. 1. These employees primarily work in gift-wrap but Kate said several will work as floor personnel.
With only two weeks before the biggest shopping day of the year, residents are already swarming stores like Target and the Temple Mall, leaving stores confident about the season ahead.
“Our community still shops the way they normally would,” Perez said. “We see the same spending pattern tendencies.”
For the upcoming 2007 holiday sales, the National Retail Federation predicts that nationwide sales will rise 4 percent this year to $474.5 billion.
However, this increase falls short of the ten-year average prediction of 4.8 percent, making this year’s holiday sales prediction the slowest growth since 2002, when sales rose a mere 1.3 percent, according to the National Retail Federation.
lfrase@temple-telegram.com
