Seeking sanctuary from excess, Teresa Knoth spent Friday shopping at a Long Grove store offering merchandise that was heavy on the homemades and short on the hustle.
”Everyone here is really nice,” said Knoth, an Elgin resident, as she shopped at the Pine Cone Christmas Shop, a year-round holiday store in Long Grove that featured such items as ornaments, baskets and wreaths.
”The people aren`t here to buy, so there aren`t any fights,” said Knoth, who abandoned the malls several years ago and now makes a day-after-Thanksgiving shopping pilgrimage to the small town of Long Grove.
But, whether puttering about in the region`s more upscale, tradition-oriented boutiques or knocking fenders and elbows with the serious
consumers in Lake County`s mega-malls, shoppers plunged with gusto Friday into the maelstrom of Christmas commerce.
Retailers have been predicting their best season in years, and sunny skies and a break from school has given many Lake County families an excuse to hit the stores and reinforce that early sense of optimism.
Not everyone needed a Norman Rockwell-like backdrop for holiday buying. At the 200-store Gurnee Mills outlet mall in Gurnee, an estimated 100,000 people were shopping Friday.
”The traffic is just phenomenal,” said Dennis Harvey, general manager of the mall. ”People are buying today, and they`re buying in a big way.”
Those like Knoth, who abhor long lines at the cash registers, went to the boutiques and family-run businesses that remain the mainstay of Main Street in many small Lake County towns.
In Long Grove, for instance, horse-drawn carriages pulled shoppers around the historic square, adding to the small-town holiday ambience. Children mugged for the camera in front of picturesque buildings. Display windows featured country craft-type items such as baskets. A strong scent of potpourri, in seasonally appropriate pine, wafted through many stores.
At the Pine Cone Christmas Shop, employee Elaine MacShane said she hoped this season`s sales will be strong. Although her store was busy Friday, MacShane said that after several dismal shopping seasons, she was reluctant to predict a dramatic sales surge.
”Who knows this year with the economy,” she said, while ringing up orders. ”I imagine everyone`s hoping things will improve.”
Some people sought out Lake County`s small towns strictly for the atmosphere.
Nancy Dahlquist, a Rolling Meadows resident, is among the most awe-inspiring of holiday shoppers: The One Who Already Is Done.
”Everything is ready to go,” she said, while relaxing at the Country Store at Wauconda Orchards in Wauconda. ”I can put the gifts under the tree as soon as it`s up. We`re just here for the atmosphere.”
Throughout the Chicago area Friday, the shoppers came. The shoppers saw. And, most important, the shoppers spent.
After enduring three horrible Christmas selling seasons, retailers said they see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Signs of a pickup in consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of the nation`s gross domestic product, began appearing earlier this month.
First the nation`s chain stores reported their sales in October were up virtually across the board, a sharp departure from previous months` figures.
In quick succession, the University of Michigan said its widely watched consumer confidence index for November jumped to 83.6 from 73.3 in October, and the National Retail Federation revised upward its forecast for Christmas sales. Instead of posting an anemic 2 to 3 percent increase, sales would climb 4 to 6 percent, the federation said.
The First National Bank of Chicago weighed in with what appeared to be an exceptionally high prediction. Christmas sales would increase an average of 10 percent, said Diane Swonk, vice president and senior regional economist.
And some were saying sales could be even higher than that prediction.
”We`re predicting sales increases of 10 to 12 percent for the whole street,” said Russell Saltzman, executive director of the Greater North Michigan Avenue Association, who watched happily from his windows as more than 100,000 shoppers crowded the sidewalks on the Magnificent Mile.
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”Last Saturday was a record, and this will be another,” he said.
For retailers, the upbeat predictions and shoppers` reactions Friday could have come sooner. In the Chicago-area, venerable retailers such as Homer`s and Colby`s furniture stores were shuttered during the past year.
But Edward A. Brennan, chairman and chief executive officer of Sears Roebuck and Co., has been maintaining that a turnaround was just around the corner. After three years consumers` pent-up demand, would drive sales significantly higher, he said. His hopeful prediction was seconded by officers of Deloitte & Touche, one of the nation`s Big Six accounting firms, which conducts an annual survey of consumer spending habits.
And Friday, that forecast appeared to be panning out.
In Downtown Chicago, North Michigan Avenue auto traffic was jammed. Sidewalks on State Street and on Michigan Avenue were so crowded that walking required determination.
Throngs stood in front of the decorated Christmas windows at Marshall Field`s on State Street and other stores.
At Water Tower Place, the line for a simple cup of coffee at Gloria Jean`s Coffee Bean stretched out of the store all afternoon.
”It`s overwhelming,” said Dr. Olivia Croom, a dentist from Detroit, visiting downtown Chicago. She added, ”But I`m shopping, so I don`t mind.”
”It`s exciting,” said her husband, Michael Croom, a salesman. ”I wish Detroit had a similar downtown.”
In the northwest suburbs, shoppers scurried though the maze-like contours of Woodfield Mall, looking like ants at rush hour on an ant farm.
Jim Linowski, the mall`s general manager, said there were 6 percent more cars in the mall`s parking lot, with a capacity for 10,600-plus vehicles, than there were on the same day in 1991. At One Schaumburg Place, 3,000 out of the 3,600 parking spaces were filled.
Cars inched through the Woodfield parking lot seeking an empty space. Inside, weary shoppers sat on the floors if they could find room, clutching their booty to their chests.
In the western suburbs, merchants and mall managers said it was perhaps the best day-after-Thanksgiving in three or four years.
”Today is a very heavy day for us. It`s been a good increase over a couple of years,” said Jim Romano, vice president of operations at the Yorktown Shopping Center in Lombard.
In Aurora, the Fox Valley Shopping Center was mobbed. People stood in lines to see Santa, in lines to buy goods. They blocked the aisles, filled the benches and restaurants and clogged the mall`s hallways.