A holiday sale in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty Images
The Season

For these retailers, the holiday season is crucial — and has deadlines

Sean McHenry Dec 18, 2019
A holiday sale in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

It’s the busiest time of the year for retailers, so throughout this season, we’re following a group of small businesses to hear how they navigate the holidays. We first checked in with these retailers back in November before all of the Black Friday sales.

This time, we called them up less than two weeks before Christmas — but that’s not the only deadline they have to worry about. In order to ship items from their e-commerce stores, the retailers also have to think about USPS’s holiday shipping deadlines.

Patty Delgado, Hija de tu Madre

Patty Delgado (left) with her father, Fancisco Delgado. (Courtesy of Patty Delgado).

Patty Delgado runs Hija de tu Madre, a Latina-focused e-commerce business based in Los Angeles, California.

December 16, 2019

“From now up until the 18th [December] are going to be our busiest days, just because we have to hit USPS cut-off times for shipping for these orders to arrive by Christmas.”

Patty Delgado, December 2019

 

Gary Merriman, Fish Hawk

(Courtesy of Gary Merriman)

Gary Merriman opened the Fish Hawk, an Atlanta fly fishing store, nearly 46 years ago.

December 16, 2019

“Haven’t really seen what we call ‘desperate’ in the retail business yet. As you get closer to Christmas, you get people who have procrastinated so long, they get desperate, so they’re in just grabbing stuff. We haven’t seen that yet.”

Kristin Thalheimer Bingham, Dean’s Sweets

Kristin Thalheimer Bingham, along with husband Dean, run Dean’s Sweets in Portland, Maine.

Kristin Thalheimer Bingham (Credit: Melissa Mullen)

“Our business is very busy right now. I think of it as ‘the nexus,’ when everything is happening at once. So we still have corporate orders, we have website orders that are still coming in, and people walking into the store.”

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