Black Friday good day for local sales

November 26, 2012, 6:06 pm by Adam Troxtell

Sister in-laws Meredith Smith, left, Olivia Robinson, center, and Anne Robinson of Dallas stimulate local economy with their Marble Falls Main Street purchases on Small Business Saturday.

Local retailers say they saw an increase in Black Friday shoppers and sales this year, but stores had mixed results on the Saturday following Thanksgiving.

Llano and Burnet stores reported big sales on Saturday, but some Marble Falls shops saw fewer customers than years past.

Known as Small Business Saturday nationally, the weekend following turkey day is recognized as the time to spend money locally. The Marble Falls branch of retail chain store Bealls saw a steady stream of customers both days, manager Rosemary Dowdy said. The store was also open on Thanksgiving night, which brought out a large number of shoppers.

"On Black Friday we’re always busy; Saturday, we’re usually pretty busy until about 1 o’clock, and that’s what we saw this year,” Dowdy said. "But this year we were open Thanksgiving night, and I’ve never seen that many shoppers in a single store in a town of this size. We had people lining up outside the door. I did meet and exceed the goals I had for this week, so I’m very happy.”

Saturday did not meet expectations for some local stores. Vanessa Monette owns Plenty Boutique and Butterfly Babies Boutique inside Old Oak Square in Marble Falls. She said Black Friday was great for the stores, but the next day fell below the average set by previous years.

"The weekend was slower,” Monette said. "There were definitely less customers on Saturday compared to last year. Friday was great; both stores had a constant flow of customers all day. Friday kept getting busier as the day went by, and we had to stay open an extra hour. We beat our numbers from last year.”

Burnet merchants were a happy lot with several reporting surprisingly good sales on Friday and even better results on Saturday.

"We had a wonderful weekend,” said Cindy Lamb, owner of the All Mixed Up gift shop on Burnet’s historic downtown square. "There were a lot more people in town on Friday than I ever expected.”

"And Saturday was phenomenal.”

Llano County retailers continued the upward trend of sales through this holiday season.

Recent sales tax figures indicated that retail sales in the City of Llano grew 9.5 percent over the same amount in 2011.