Warm Winter Whacks Local Retailers

Happy with the temperate winter we’ve enjoyed so far?

Well, Pete Bender is rooting against you.

“It’s been brutal,” the owner said of this winter’s effect on his sales.

Bender speculated his sales were down about 35 percent from last year—one of the busiest winters in recent years for businesses like his—and sure enough, when he crunched the numbers, his sales this winter through Jan. 14, 2012 versus last year are down $12,500—about 35 percent.

“And every bit of that is business you do off of snowstorms,” he said. “It’s just funny, cause most people don’t like (a snowstorm). To people in my business, it’s like manna.”

Over at on Route 130 in Cinnaminson, retail sales manager Michelle Maxwell said last year the store emptied out of scrapers, bags of snow melt, grip tracks and 12-volt heaters.

“Right now, we have 60 bags of snow melt,” she said last week, pointing to a large pile in the store, “and we haven’t sold one yet. Last year, we sold over 100 bags. Nothing is moving.”

Bender recalled a day last year, the day before one of the several big snowstorms that hit the area, when he had roughly 50 people lined up down one whole aisle of the hardware store, snow shovels and ice melt buckets in hand.

Today, he has about 700 snow shovels waiting in the basement—and a full stock out on the floor—and about a dozen pallets of ice melt (48 buckets a pallet x 40 lbs. a bucket=23,000 lbs. of unsold ice melt) on the back dock.

Unfortunately, Bender acknowledged, “that’s all business you can’t really count on … If it doesn’t happen, you’ve just got to tough it out.”

By mid-January of last year, the region had already been glutted with two major snowstorms totaling close to 30 inches. Overall snow accumulations for last winter averaged more than 50 inches, depending on the municipality.

Brenda Ainsworth, a sales manager at Riverton Pool & Garden on the corner of Route 130 and New Albany Road, said their snow-removal business is hurting from the springlike temperatures.

“We snowplow commercial areas, like the Cherry Hill Mall,” Maxwell said. “The guys are just waiting for some snow to fall.”

Moorestown Hardware has been in business since 1972 and Bender’s owned it since 2000. The store’s survived barren winters before, and it will survive this one, he said.

If there’s a silver lining, it’s that it’s only mid-January.

“We’ll see what happens in February,” he said.

Patch freelance writer Catherine Laughlin contributed to this report.