Early morning sales planned for Friday

Businesses around Holton’s Town Square who noted good business on Small Business Saturday despite bad weather are looking forward to even more business with Friday’s Early Morning Sales, one of the highlights of the holiday shopping season on the Square.

Twelve businesses are taking part in the annual early morning shopping event, and with a better weather picture in sight, business owners have high expectations for Holton’s version of “Black Friday.”

One of those business owners is Carolyn Koger of Koger Variety, who was happy at the number of stores participating, particularly when she has seen some years where that number wasn’t so encouraging.

“We have enough businesses participating that it’s worthwhile,” Koger said. “We’ve done it before when there were only three stores participating, but business was still good. It’s just that with only three stores, sometimes the amount of money coming in doesn’t outweigh the overhead.”

Candi McCrory of Heart to Home Gifts and Décor said that if last year’s Early Friday Sales was any indication, the “overhead” won’t be a concern.

“Last year, I had people waiting at the door to come in when I opened at 6 a.m.,” McCrory said. “I would anticipate it being pretty crazy that morning.”

Confidence is high around the Square that the Early Friday Sales event will generate more business than stores received on Saturday, Nov. 28, recognized this year as Small Business Saturday. Some of those stores, however, still did good business despite wintry conditions that kept many people home.

“It was really nasty out,” McCrory said. “But I was pretty busy that afternoon, from lunchtime on. It was pretty packed in here.”

One business that participated in Small Business Saturday that won’t be taking part in the Early Friday Sales, however, is expressions, whose owner, Rogette Branam, noted good business in spite of the weather and many people following the Holton High School Wildcats to the state football championship game in Salina that day.

“The weather was a huge factor, but we were still pretty busy,” said Branam, adding that she hopes participating businesses do well on Friday.

Furthermore, the concept of Small Business Saturday is still kind of new, Branam noted. The “shopping holiday” was first observed in 2010 as kind of a small-town counterpart to “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday,” with an emphasis on the brick-and-mortar businesses like those found on the Square.

“It’s starting to get around now, in the smaller towns,” Branam said. “I’m hoping that it really catches on here.”

For now, the Early Friday Sales stands as Holton’s counterpart to the nationally-promoted shopping events.

“It’s interesting, because even though you’re starting at 6 a.m., you’re just swamped for a certain amount of time,” Koger said. “It’s not just a few coming in at a time. People come in batches, and then they go on to the next store. And since the discount changes each hour, some of them will come back, while others don’t want to get up that early so they take a different discount.”

In addition to Koger Variety and Heart to Home, participating businesses in Early Friday Sales will include Ginger Snips, J&M Sewing, Jayhawk TV and Appliance, the Golden Fleece, the Gossip, Uptown Treasures, More Than Lemons, Lasting Impressions, Penny’s and Hunny Mae’s.

“I’m glad that this many stores wanted to do it this year,” Koger said. “It started out with Lasting Impressions asking me if I wanted to do it, and I said, ‘Yeah, but how are we going to get the others?’ And it worked.”