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This has been a challenging season for retailers in downtown Salt Lake City near the City Creek construction zone.
Deseret Book has some distinct advantages as a business for Latter-day Saints. But the challenges come in when you include the economy and the location of its main store downtown. It moved from inside the mall to South Temple, but protection walls have made it hard to find.
Then, this fall, the economic turmoil hit the nation and hit quickly. "In October, the bottom just fell out of retail for just about every segment of retail," Dew said. "Now, some segments are coming back and happily ours is."
As other book retailers with a variety of items, Deseret Book and Seagull Books have a large range of faith-based hardbacks and paperbacks, DVDs, CDs and home decorations; many in the $25 to $30 range.
The other advantage is a large concentration of Latter-day Saints in the western United States, and 40 Deseret Book stores and 26 Seagull Book stores.
Customers are telling Dew they plan to celebrate Christmas, but they may not spend as much as last year. They told her they planned to remember the people they love and were looking to make every dollar count.
Dew said the phrase customers were using was, "I want a gift that keeps on giving;" in other words, something that person will use again and again. She believed other retailers were hearing that as well.
E-mail: cmikita@ksl.com
