By CHARLES YOUNG
The Exponent Telegram
CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — Although it is still the middle of summer and people are still wearing tank tops, flip flops and shorts, retailers in the North Central West Virginia area are already looking ahead to the fall season.
Joe Bell, a spokesman for Cafaro, the company that owns Meadowbrook Mall, said retailers are currently preoccupied with sales and promotions aimed at children and college students who will be returning to school in the coming weeks.
(Exponent Telegram file photo)
“Right now, we are on the cusp of the second largest retail season of the year. That’s the back-to-school season,” he said. “It is second only to the holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas. People have traditionally spent a lot of money getting their kids ready for school.”
“Right around late June, you’ll begin to see clearance sales,” he said. “The clearance sales are to clear out any remaining spring and summer merchandise just to make room for all those types of merchandise geared towards kids going back to school and college students.”
Because people tend to do their shopping ahead of time, the fall shopping season actually begins in the middle of summer and ends before the official start of autumn, Bell said.
“You’ll start to see the fall merchandise moving in about late July,” he said. “You’ll see the back- to-school sales and that will continue all the way through September.”
Even the merchandise for fall holidays like Halloween will be on the shelves before the season begins, Bell said.
“That stuff has begun appearing earlier and earlier,” he said. “That will actually start appearing in September. You’ll see Halloween items start to pop up.”
Clothing retailers have to get their fall items out early to take sure they are able to keep up with fashion trends and anticipate the tastes of their customers, Bell said.
“In terms of retailers, they start talking about this nearly a year prior,” he said.
However, in recent years many appeal retailers have begun introducing more clothes more often to keep up with changing fads and styles, Bell said.
“A lot of them are essentially responding to the ‘fast fashion’ trend,” he said. “We’ve seen retailers like Forever 21 and H&M and others — they keep very close tabs on what’s happening on social media because their clientele, they see something that pops up on Instagram and they want it today. So those retailers are moving very quickly to fulfill ‘fast-fashion’ desires.”
The start of fall also sees retailers preparing for hunting season, Bell said.
In order to prepare for the fall retail season, it’s important to first sell off any remaining summer items, said Cathy Goings, the owner of Wicked Sisters Boutique and Embellishments in the downtown Clarksburg area.
“Typically what we do is have an end-of-the-season clearance sale,” she said. “That allows us to get ready because the new fall merchandise has started coming in even in this past week.”
Embellishments, which specializes in gift items, tends to be less seasonal than her clothing line, but it’s still important to be prepared for the influx of shoppers visiting the area for festivals, Goings said.
“Because we have the Italian Heritage Festival, as well as the Black Heritage Festival, our big transition right now is to get ready for those events,” she said. “That brings a lot of people in, and they’ve been repeat customers over the years and whenever they come back into town, they like to come to the stores. I always try to make sure I’m fully stocked.”
Keeping up with seasonal changes is a full-time job itself, Goings said.
“I’m going to market in the middle of August and that’s for Spring/Summer 2018,” she said. “Typically for clothes, it’s the year prior.”
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