The Night Owls

When Shoppers World, an $8,000,000, 44-store suburban shopping center, opened last fall at Framingham, Mass., 20 miles west of Boston, it tried an experiment. Its shops decided to stay open until 9 p.m. each Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The experiment worked so well that the stores stayed open five nights a week during the Christmas rush, and last week all but three of the shops decided to go right on staying open three nights a week. Reason: they did more business at night than in the daytime.

Their decision was the latest evidence of a great change in U.S. merchandising, the shift to night selling. The change is based on two facts: 1) people have more time to shop after working hours, and 2) the five-day week has changed Saturday, the traditional peak shopping day, into a "stay-at-home" day. Speeding the trend is the fact that the defense program, drawing more & more wives into the labor force, makes it harder for women to shop during the day. The National Retail Dry

Goods Assn. reports that in one year, the proportion of leading department and specialty stores open at least one night a week has jumped from 69% to 78%.

Said one Manhattan merchant last week: "The only remarkable thing is that it took stores so long to realize that it was silly to try to do most of their selling during the very hours when most people couldn't buy because they were working."

Quick Decision. Night-selling has brought remarkable changes in U.S. shopping habits. Women used to do most of the buying, frequently returning goods if their husbands disapproved; now whole families shop together. Not only are fewer goods returned, but with husbands along, retailers find more on-the-spot decisions on such "big ticket" items as TV sets, refrigerators and other heavy appliances. They move far faster at night than during the day, with the result that dollar volume at night frequently tops daytime shopping as much as 25%. Monday is the peak night-shopping day in many cities (34%). Thursday, a big-city favorite (21%), is a close runner-up.

Food stores, particularly supermarkets, were among the first to cash in on night-shopping. Chicago's Super Market Institute Inc., whose members own 6,048 stores, reports that 27% of them are now open every evening. None of them tops California's Hollywood Ranch Market, which has thrown the key away, employs three shifts to stay open 24 hours every day, including Sunday, finds its store almost as crowded at 3 a.m. as at 3 p.m.

At first most department stores bucked the trend, none more so than Manhattan's Fifth Avenue stores. They looked down their noses in 1937 when Franklin Simon first experimented with staying open until 9 p.m. Thursday nights. What changed their attitude was the loss of business to outlying shops which stayed open evenings. Today, out of 21 top Fifth Avenue stores, only eight still keep their doors locked every night of the week.

Slow Revisions. One reason why many merchants dislike night hours is that they boost overhead (overtime pay, supper money, extra shifts, bigger light bills). Richard H. Rich, president of Atlanta's Rich's, terms the move to expand night shopping "a lamentable trend." But Sears, Roebuck, with three thriving Atlanta stores, stays open two nights a week. Says Sears's Southern Vice President Charles H. Kellstadt: "If you've invested millions in a plant, the more hours you use it the more you can reduce costs." More than any other merchandiser, Sears, by its aggressive selling, has been forcing the pace all over the U.S. In Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee, it now stays open three nights a week. In addition, Sears, and many other stores, have a 24-hour telephone order service.

Against the argument, often raised, that employees don't like to work at night, Dallas' Sanger Bros, finds that 15% of its sales force asked for it; the bigger trade brings more in commissions. Furthermore, all merchants like the trend toward family buying. Families are buying items that individual shoppers might decide they could get along without.

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