Yuba-Sutter stores hope for big business

Yuba-Sutter mom-and-pop stores found varied success as holiday shoppers bought gifts the week after Thanksgiving.

The Garden Gate floral shop went gangbusters, said co-owner Wendy Ferraro, 40. More than 150 customers clamored for poinsettias, five times what she normally sees by early December.

"People are ordering this year," Ferraro said. "I don't know why. I'm just glad."

Ferraro was one of the few shopkeepers whose business electrified the first week of the holiday shopping season. Others hummed along while some said they were just plain dead.

Business was "quiet" at The Frame Shop in Yuba City, said co-owner Gayle Cowley, 60. Shoppers who used to buy and frame a new piece of art are now spending less to clean and repair family heirlooms they already have.

"It's just a sign of what's going on for people," said Cowley, who's owned the store 25 years with her 57-year-old husband. "They're not doing anything really extravagant."

And it's not just the holidays or even this year. The last four years hammered the frame shop. "This is probably the worst economy I've seen," Mike Cowley said.

The new bookstore in downtown Marysville hasn't seen much of any economy; it opened 31⁄2 months ago. Dinah's on D Street was "dead" before Thanksgiving, said owner Dinah Parks, 40, but has picked up since. Children's' books, including the Wimpy Kid series, have been moving off the shelves.

Lavina Blaser, 66, strolled over from her business, The Brick Coffeehouse Cafe, to buy "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" for her 8-year-old grandson. Parks didn't have it in stock, but ordered a copy. Blaser was willing to wait so she could get it from her next door neighbor.

"I'm trying to do my shopping entirely in downtown Marysville," Blaser added, and she thinks more people should do the same.

"Nobody knows about (downtown Marysville)," she continued.

Small businesses across the state held their own or did a little better than last year, said Scott Hauge, president and founder of Small Business California, a San Francisco-based organization designed to advocate for the state's 3.2 million small businesses.

Christmas season is key for many small businesses, Hauge added, typically making 20 to 25 percent of an operation's annual sales, and sometimes as much as half.

"We're crossing our fingers that it holds," he said.

Christmas is florist Ferraro's No. 3 moneymaking holiday, behind Valentine's Day and Mothers' Day. Her early poinsettia boom isn't even her big push. Garden Gate gets half of its holiday business in the week before Christmas as merrymakers buy floral centerpieces and last-minute gifts.

It's the cherry on top of a year in which she's up 15 to 20 percent over 2010, something she hopes isn't limited to her store.

"I'm hoping things are just turning around," she said, "for everybody."