Gun, Sock Sales Steady in Slow Season

"Happy holidays, Sears" is the way they answer the telephone this month at the Porter Square department store branch. Things may be merry at Sears, but for many Cambridge businesses sales will be "a little slower than last year," local merchants reported yesterday.

Sales are "down a bit," but "firearms are always a big seller," at Blum Jewelry, and this year is no exception. Business is best when "you get the wife coming in and buying her husband a little Christmas present," salesman Theodore J. Hunt said last night.

People seem to be buying mostly practical items this year. "Wool socks are a gifty item" at the Cambridge Army and Navy Store, and Hit or Miss is selling a lot of shetland sweaters and velvet. Furniture stores also claim to be doing well. "I don't understand it, I figured it would be terrible," Phillip L. Dicarlo, the manager of Putnam Furniture, said yesterday.

In an unusual advertising strategy, the Head Shop has turned its storefront sign upside down. "It suited our mood, and it makes people come in and ask us why we did it." Arthur L. Leslitz said as he was stocking the shelves with unusually shaped plastic tubes.

Barbara J. Sullivan of the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce said this year has been an especially bad shoplifting season. "People don't have enough money, but they still want things," Sullivan said.

"I really feel retail sales are down this year," Sullivan said, a trend she says is making retailers pay more attention to the problems of shoplifting and employee theft. "Ten cents of every dollar spent in retail stores goes to fight shoplifting." she added.