Retailers, Mall Owners Report Strong Sales

LOS ANGELES-Many retailers and mall owners here and in other parts of the nation are reporting strong sales volume for the Thanksgiving weekend, raising hopes that the holiday sales season will be stronger than some experts have been expecting.

In the LA suburb of Glendale, shoppers who didn’t make it to the 1.5-million-sf Glendale Galleria early on Friday or Saturday had to wait several minutes just to get into the parking structure and begin their hunt for a parking space. Once inside the mall, they had to snake their way through thousands of fellow shoppers—many of them already loaded down with big shopping bags and boxes of presents.

Foot traffic at the mall was up 8% on Friday compared to a year earlier, Glendale Galleria marketing exec Annette Bethers says. It was up an even stronger 10% on Saturday, she adds.