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Black Friday without the big-box hustle

Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2005

Click here to enlarge this photo Susan Whitney-Wilkerson⁄The Gazette Mount Airy resident Jane Robbins (left), her 15-year-old son, Jack, and daughter Hannah Robbins, 12, get help from Brian Meader, a Sykesville resident who works at Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center in choosing Jack’s Christmas present during a Friday shopping excursion at the Wheaton store. Click here to enlarge this photo Susan Whitney-Wilkerson⁄The Gazette During a Friday shopping excursion, New York resident Mercedes Ross (left) and her cousin Chris Simpson of Takoma Park have some fun inside the Old Town shop Now and Then.

When the couple, in town from Texas to spend Thanksgiving with their son and his family, finally ventured out to do some holiday shopping later that morning, they encountered neither frenetic crowds nor lines at the Covered Market gift shop in Old Town Takoma Park.

‘‘It’s like you have a real downtown here, with real stores,” Marilyn Smolinsky said, with her husband completing the thought: ‘‘We love it.”

Around the same time, Brenda Hayes stepped out of her car and walked with ease into Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center in Wheaton. There was no commotion over an Xbox game station or ultra-cheap laptops — just the sounds of a salesman tapping on conga drums and two young men picking at electric guitars.

‘‘I’m not swayed by a lot of the ads,” said Hayes, a Riverdale resident, about Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year. ‘‘... It’s the retailers’ way of making money and we [sometimes] fall prey to the pressure.”

For small business owners, Friday marked the unofficial beginning of the holiday shopping season that isn’t so much about deep discounts and record-breaking sales as it is about customer service and a more personalized experience.

Customers like Hayes are looking for service that big, crowded stores can’t provide during the holiday frenzy. Hayes’ eyes roamed the store for a drum set, a gift for her 14-year-old daughter. She walked through the narrow aisles in search of ideas and product knowledge.

‘‘I know they make noise — a lot of noise,” Hayes said.

She headed to Chuck Levin’s because she said it has the best reputation among music supply stores. It’s about quality, not snapping up cheap deals in a mad rush, she said.

Shoppers in Takoma Park, which shares several blocks of retail dominated by historic facades and independent businesses, said they appreciated the slower pace in an area where mega-malls don’t exist.

‘‘I like it here, and I like the shop owners,” said Betsy Scroggs, who described her Silver Spring address as suburban Takoma Park. ‘‘I’d rather have a root canal, actually, than go to busy malls.”

While Black Friday earned its name because it’s the day large retailers and national chains reach the ‘‘black” that indicates a yearly profit, the concept doesn’t really apply to small businesses, said Jude Garrett, owner of Now and Then in Takoma Park. She did say, however, that the last quarter of the year is important for small retailers because that is also when they make the most money.

Chuck Levin’s recently ended a big sale, said Alan Levin, a co-owner. Any elbow-to-elbow rush usually begins early- to mid-December when customers shop for more high-ticket items. Drum set sales, which typically start at $300, go up from about 10 a week to about 25 a day.

While the store gets an extra push during the holidays, Levin said he relies on consistent sales throughout the year. Also, Chuck Levin’s may not advertise major markdowns, but there is usually some type of sale at the store, he said. ‘‘If not, we’ll make it a sale.”

Specialty or unique items can serve to attract customers to a small business — especially during the holidays — and keep them coming back, giving the retailers an edge over large stores that buy products in bulk to get better pricing.

‘‘A lot of people like shopping in a smaller store that has unusual items,” said Julie Paez, co-owner of The Big Bad Woof in the Takoma neighborhood of Washington, D.C. As a result, Paez said her store, which offers ‘‘essentials for the socially conscious pet,” did well over the weekend.

While small shops can’t usually offer the low prices that big retailers can, Barbarian Book Shop in Wheaton’s Triangle Lane shopping area offers items that retailers like Borders and Barnes and Noble bookstores don’t, said owner James Wu.

Shoppers at Barbarian will find comic books, trading cards, used DVDs and toys that any collector or videogame fanatic would appreciate. ‘‘We don’t carry too much of the commercial stuff,” Wu said. ‘‘We order for people stuff they can’t find anywhere else.”

Small stores also have better control over customer service. The shopping experience is important to Dave Albo of Springfield, Va., who said he’d rather pay a higher price at a small business like Chuck Levin’s if that means better service.

There are at least 50 staff members working at Chuck Levin’s on the weekends –– including people on the sales floor and managing the store’s stock. The sales staffers are all ‘‘natural musicians” that have an average of 20 to 25 years of musical experience, said Coleman O’Donoghue, a store manager. The staff is there to help, not push sales, he added.

Customer service provides the leverage most small retailers need to compete, said Roxanne Letkoff, professor of marketing at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

‘‘The ones that do well are those that provide quite a bit of extra service,” Letkoff said.

Shoppers in small businesses are there for a high-quality shopping experience, even if that means they have to pay a little more, Letkoff said.

Such service is something that’s sorely missed in the Washington, D.C., area: Bob Atwood, general manager of the Takoma Park-Silver Spring Co-op grocery store and former president of the Old Takoma Business Association, said a customer service ranking of the nation’s 300 largest metropolitan areas put Washington a few steps from the bottom of the list.

Pennye Jones-Napier, the association’s current president and co-owner of The Big Bad Woof, said shopkeepers can take a more active role in hiring employees, ensuring better service.

‘‘For the kids who make $6 an hour [at large retailers], it’s a job,” she said. ‘‘They could care less if they’re helping someone or not. But when I think about the kids who work at The Big Bad Woof, they all live here — maybe they’re filling in from college ... and it makes a difference.”

A combination of customer service and unique merchandise has helped Perry Mohney, owner of The Toy Exchange on Triangle Lane in downtown Wheaton, keep his business successful. Sales there triple from Black Friday through Christmas, he said, with customers looking for train sets and collectibles.

Mohney relies on his inventory — mostly collectible toys and trains — to attract shoppers. There are train sets for novices and collectors that range from $99 to $400. Don’t waste time shopping at Toys ‘‘R” Us or K-B Toys for vintage train sets, he said. ‘‘The salespeople there recommend my store,” he said. ‘‘... [Shoppers] are going to be at Target and Wal-Mart at 6 a.m. and then after that big rush, they usually come to my shop.”