Patchogue Businesses Hope For Better Holiday Season

“Small Business Saturday” came and went this past weekend but the results for local small businesses in Patchogue seemed to be minimal.

Created and promoted by American Express in 2010, “Small Business Saturday” was an attempt to urge shoppers to shop at local small businesses during one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year.

The big theme amongst local business owners and managers was that the early season was right in line or slightly better than last year, but still nowhere near the level it was at prior to the economic downturn that began in the fall of 2007.

At , located on Patchogue's Main Street, there were more people shopping than usual over the weekend.

“We had people shopping and it was a good season for us,” a manager at the store said.

She said that the early indications are that the 2011 holiday season will be a good one for her store.

“I’m hoping that we’ll have a better year than last year,” she said. “It wasn’t bad (last year) but we’d like to see it better – like it used to be.”

Over at on East Main Street, owner Pat Woods came to nearly the same conclusions.

“I’m thinking it’s going to be a better shopping season than last year,” Woods said. “Even before Small Business Saturday, I did see an uptick in sales.”

He also said that he did not see any particular difference on Small Business Saturday as compared to the other days.

“Being that (Small Business Saturday) was all over the Internet and the radio – it was advertised obviously, people knew about it – but I don’t know if there was something else that could have been done to promote it more,” Woods said.

Richard Siegel, the owner of actually saw more shoppers the day before.

“We were busier on Friday – the proverbial Black Friday – and obviously we don’t promote it like the giant stores do,” Siegel said. “And on Saturday I didn’t know what to expect for Small Business Saturday. We did our business but it didn’t seem anything special, people just weren’t really mentioning it much.”

Siegel was projecting a shopping season similar to last year and said that business felt the same throughout the weekend this year as it did last.