Small businesses in Wheaton keep up with shorter shopping season

It’s the most wonderful time of the year for small businesses as shoppers flock to their stores for gifts and deals.

The holiday shopping season left businesses and shoppers alike with fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, due to Thanksgiving falling on its latest possible date in 2024.

While the late Thanksgiving won’t happen again until 2030, small business owners in Wheaton and St. Charles said the shorter season seemed to get shoppers in the doors quicker.

“You know we have five days less than we typically have, Thanksgiving was so late, but I think the good part of that was we started with a bang,” Jill Card, owner of Jeans And A Cute Top Shop in Wheaton and St Charles said. “I like that the panic set in a little early, it’s working.”

Card has 15 years of holiday shopping season experience under her belt.

“It’s been festive, it’s been busy,” she said. “Everything happened so fast, we just hit the ground running.”

This year, her customers gravitated towards jeans and festive wear.

“We’ve got bows on jewelry, we’ve got bows on sweaters,” she said.

Twenty percent of their year in sales happen during the holiday shopping rush, proving crucial for success.

Stores down the street are seeing similar results of the short season.

“We have been going nonstop,” Elizabeth Di John, owner of Wildflower Mercantile in Wheaton said. “With consumers knowing they were going to have a shorter window it gave them permission to start shopping sooner.”

Di John extended hours and opened seven days a week to account for the holiday rush.

As a first-time business owner, she said this time of the year means everything for a small business.

“We thrive on it. It is really a make or break to be honest with you,” she said. “It sets us up to be able to enter into the community and bring new goods into our store… That just means the world to us.”

Only 27 days separated Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, five fewer than there were last year. Thanksgiving will fall on Nov. 28 roughly every five-to-six years. The next time this will occur is in 2030, then not again until 2041.