Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 15, 1995 TAG: 9509150076
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Like the smell of fresh meat oozing through an aquarium full of sharks, word of the bargain spread through the store.
Linen department ... designer sheets ... $6.97.
Stein Mart is not the place for ill-mannered hordes, even during a grand opening. But, politely, and with a determination seldom seen outside feeding time at the fish tank, hundreds of shoppers converged on bed sheets and houndstooth blazers and Polo shirts at the brand-new store.
"It's ... it's like a feeding frenzy," said one shopper who had retreated to the relative safety of the gift department.
"This is incredible," said Jean Martin, a sales associate in the women's apparel department, as she watched a woman carry off an armful of discount-priced blouses and slacks. "People were waiting outside this morning."
Store manager Monty Bibb watched, smiling, an island of complacency in the middle of a foaming sea of shoppers.
"Oh, it'll probably stay pretty busy for a while," Bibb said.
Credit Bibb with a flair for understatement. In the 15 minutes after the store opened at Tanglewood Mall, 520 people came through its front door. A lot of them left carrying white-and-green Stein Mart shopping bags.
Impressive, yes, but not unexpected, said Michael Fisher, the company's executive vice president of stores.
"This is a good reception, but it's certainly not unusual," said Fisher, who had come from the company's headquarters in Jacksonville, Fla., for the grand opening. Stein Marts don't open with a lot of ceremony, he said, but word of a new store usually gets around.
But shopping on a weekday morning? Almost makes a person wonder whether anybody in Roanoke went to work Thursday.
Maybe they didn't.
"I actually heard that some people planned to take the day off to shop," said John Fraley, a sales associate in the men's department.
And then there was the woman - call her Shopper X - who sat on a bench outside the store while she waited for a friend to emerge from the well-mannered melee.
She wouldn't give her name - said she didn't want her boss to see this story and figure out that his employees had finagled early lunch breaks to go shopping.
"Honey, as soon as I saw people starting to take pictures in there, I told my friend we better go," she said with a conspiratorial nod and a pat on the arm.
by CNB