Boxing Day sales have not been a blowout, according to some locally owned retail store owners in Moncton.
“It was not nearly as busy as a typical Boxing Day sales year,” said Chelsea McFadden, who is a retail clerk at Service Shoe in Moncton.
McFadden said their retail store did open with reduced hours on Sunday, but customer traffic was scarce.
“I think there was a little bit of confusion this year with Boxing Day sales being on a Sunday — a lot of people were not sure if we were open,” she said.
She said with limited capacity in the store amid COVID-19 restrictions, some people did not want to wait outside in lineups, which she says could have also been a deterrent.
With no more Atlantic bubble allowing people to freely travel between Atlantic provinces, she said there was also less out-of-province traffic.
“A lot of people from P.E.I. like to come to Moncton to shop and they are not able to do that because of the self-isolation required to come here,” she said.
While there were reports of long lineups to get into Champlain Place and some big box stores, according to Michelle Parker, who owns STILE clothing store on Main Street, many of those shoppers are typically looking for blowout prices that locally owned businesses often cannot afford to offer
“We are not 70 per cent off and it is a bit of a disadvantage to us that we are not so discounted but I also believe that some of our customers understand that,” said Parker.
She said she has actually seen an increase in the number of people buying locally leading up to Christmas.
“I think that people are more away of that than they ever have been before and I think that is really what has helped us a lot in this whole pandemic,” she said.
It is a trend she said she hopes will continue long after Boxing Day and the pandemic have passed.