Mixed reviews of holiday shopping season from Windsor-area small businesses

Some small boutiques in Windsor-Essex have given the 2024 holiday shopping season mixed reviews, saying that customers seem to be tightening their belts in the face of a rising cost of living.

But a couple of businesses say they benefited from an increased desire to shop local and to shop for experiences rather than products.

“My clients, a lot of them … purchase gift certificates for loved ones for my services because they’ve done them themselves, and they have seen how much it’s been beneficial for them,” said Stephanie Santos, the owner of Synergy Wellness in Kingsville, whose services include massage, sound healing and reiki.

“Again, that whole idea of having an experience versus a material item.”

Santos’s business is up over last year, she said, and her gift certificate sales are part of that overall trend.

The owner of Storytellers Bookstore on Ottawa Street in Windsor said she too is hoping to exceed last year’s sales after three slow months in September, October and November.

“December made up for it,” Linda Ward said.

“I think it went a lot better because of the postal strike. I think a lot of people decided that they were going to shop local rather than worry about getting stuff in the mail.”

‘It’s trying times’

Books sold well this year, she said, particularly leather-bound classics. Puzzles were also popular.

“And I did notice that a lot more people are buying books for their kids. So that’s a good thing,” she said.

But Ward said customers also seem to be hurting financially, and they seem to have put more rigid spending limits in place to help them stay within their budgets.

“It’s trying times right now,” she said. “So it’s hard on everybody.”

Ayad Saddy, the co-owner of BB Branded, a lifestyle and sneaker boutique in Devonshire Mall, agreed that people have been tightening their belts now that the stimulus money that governments injected into the economy during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic has dried up.

“It’s been a little different from previous years,” Saddy said.

“We actually got better for a bit for the years after, and now it seems like there’s just a lot of tightening in the marketplace. … I’ve spoken to a lot of my colleagues … other business owners that own retail shops, and it’s kind of across the board.

BB Branded moved into a bigger store with higher overhead this year, but Saddy said he is closer to matching, rather than beating, last year’s sales with the bigger space.

“It must be a lot tougher this year for a lot of Canadian families to go out and spend the way they were spending,” he said.

People looking for sales

Diane Beck, the owner of Diane’s Treasure Shop on Pillette Road in Windsor, which sells antiques and collectibles, said she too is noticing people spending less.

She had great traffic through her store, and people were pleased to find the unique items they’d been looking for for parents or grandparents, she said.

But they were looking for discounted items because they were short of funds.

“There were people that were sharing that,” she said.

“They just didn’t have the same amount of money as they did last year, because food prices were up so much and gas prices, and they just didn’t have as much income free to buy presents this year.”

Beck said she’s not sure how much longer she’ll be able to stay in business if sales continue to decline.

“I’m just hoping that our community will support the small businesses in our area,” she said. “Because it’s vital that you do — you come in and spend some money in our shops.”