ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 30, 1996 TAG: 9612020016
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
LEGGETT'S complimentary gift wrapping is a big plus for many shoppers, with half a dozen paper choices and expertly wrapped gifts.
For the wrapping paper-challenged, an hour spent behind the gift wrap counter at the Valley View Mall Leggett store is a glimpse into a strange and wonderful world.
It's a world where creases are knife-sharp. Folds are symmetrical. Tape is discreetly hidden.
At 7 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving, when much of the city was still sleeping off pumpkin pie, the part-time elves behind the gift wrap counter were actually cutting in straight lines.
"The first week, I was quitting every day because it was so hectic and I couldn't do it," said wrapper Shelby Rexrode. That season of despair was six years ago. Now she calls the store every time a holiday approaches - Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas - asking whether they need help at the wrapping counter.
"I love it, I really do," she said, tearing a sheet of red paper off the roll with a flourish.
These days, when few large stores offer free gift wrapping anymore, Leggett's complimentary paper is a big draw, especially for shoppers with long lists and 10 thumbs.
The store offers half a dozen paper choices. Plain red. Green with candy canes. Blue with Santas. Bows and ribbons are free, too.
"It's a big selling point," said Gayle Dooley of Salem - a.k.a. No. 44 in the gift-wrap line - who with her sister, Mary Crowder, was making the annual day-after-Thanksgiving pilgrimage to the mall.
Leggett started the take-a-number system at the customer service counter a few years ago as a guard against line-jumping, an unpardonable crime that can plunge normally cheery Christmas shoppers into fierce turf wars.
The store also opened two auxiliary wrapping counters - one upstairs, by the shoe department, the other downstairs between menswear and linens - to disperse the crowds and keep the lines moving.
Gift wrapping is a delicate operation at Christmas, when patience is low and crowds are big, said Mary Moseley, the store's human resources manager. That's why the wrappers spend hours practicing their creases and cuts and bows before they're allowed to wrap in public.
"We try to teach our wrappers before we get into the season how much paper to use and so on," Moseley said. "We didn't bring anybody new in today. That would be a catastrophe."
Twenty gift wrappers worked Friday, most in four- to six-hour shifts. About three-quarters of them are part-time seasonal employees, who work 12 to 20 hours a week for slightly more than minimum wage. Rexrode, for instance, works the night shift at Halmode Apparel Inc. Some are students. Others are stay-at-home mothers.
All are - in addition to being handy with scissors - very patient.
Wrappers who can't handle demanding crowds gracefully don't last long. "The last image that customers have is right here, in gift wrap," Moseley said.
Gift wrap is, for Leggett management, a gauge of holiday sales. The earlier they start to get requests for holiday paper, the earlier the shoppers are thinking about Christmas, said store manager Tom Tyree. This year, he said, the holiday designs have already have been in demand for weeks.
The Valley View store will use some 45,000 square feet of holiday paper this season, Moseley said. To put that into perspective: The area of a football field, including the endzones, is 57,600 square feet.
Although the day after Thanksgiving - "Black Friday," in retail parlance - has long been touted as the busiest shopping day of the year, just 10 percent of all Christmas purchases will be made during this long weekend, according to Ken Gassman, a retail analyst with Davenport & Co. of Virginia in Richmond.
But Friday still was the official start of the Christmas shopping season. And total holiday sales are predicted to reach $466 billion this year, up 5 percent over last year. That's why retailers opened at the crack of dawn and offered extra discounts and generally went out of their way to lure customers - especially this year, when there are five fewer shopping days until Christmas.
Just how much each of those shoppers is spending this year depends on whom you ask. According to the National Retail Federation, American households will spend an average of $764 on Christmas presents this year, up from $685 last year. The International Mass Retail Association said it expects shoppers to spend $806, up from $655 last year. The Conference Board, a business research group, gives a much lower estimate: $450 per household, up from about $430 last year.
If the packed-to-the-edges Valley View parking lot was any indication, a good share of those households got an early start Friday.
"It fascinates me that people actually shop at 6 in the morning," said Wendy Jones, who worked the 6-to-11 shift in the main wrapping station on Friday.
"My mom thinks she's hit the jackpot," she said. A graduate student at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Jones started with Leggett a week ago. "She says, `Since you're so good at wrapping now, you can wrap all my presents at home.'''
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART\Staff. Amy Giles (left) wraps a package asby CNBRita Sowder helps shoppers at the customer service desk in Leggett's
at Valley View Mall on the day after Thanksgiving. color.