Kelsey Hofmann: ‘We had to shut off the door dinger’
Just from the sheer numbers of shoppers that could be seen perusing the wares on the sidewalks of Aurora’s downtown square in Friday’s warm and sultry weather, one would assume the revived sidewalk sales event was a rousing success. Talking to people from the participating business would confirm that.
The event led by Kelsey Hofmann of Urban Chic Boutique and Jennie Snoberger of Old Homestead Market and Floral was intended to revive the spirit and purpose of summer sidewalk sales events that were once annual event in Aurora and other small towns all across the country. Fourteen Aurora businesses on the square and beyond participated in the restart held on Friday of A’ROR’N Days in order to take advantage of the additional downtown traffic produced by the celebration.
On Friday afternoon, Hofmann reported business had been brisk since 9 a.m. at Urban Chic located inside Honeysuckle Lane on the northwest corner of the square. In addition to racks of marked down merchandise from Honeysuckle Lane, Urban Chic had racks of children’s and women’s clothing on the sidewalk and also an enclosed trailer to protect more sale items from Friday’s blustery winds.
Hofmann said there were so many shopping both outside and coming into the store between 9 and 10 that they shut off the door dinger because it was becoming annoying.
“It was really, really busy,” Hofmann said. “We’ve already sold over a hundred items and that’s pretty much the whole point of it... to get rid of it, so it’s been really good.”
Other merchants confirmed the success story on Friday afternoon and Hofmann said another bonus of the event is that the stores had seen many new faces with people coming in who had never shopped there before. She said although the event was supposed to conclude at 5 she was planning to stay around until 7 to see if shoppers would come in from the nearby A’ROR’N Days Car Show and other events. She said she had heard from other merchants who were planning to extend their hours as well. Others talked about continuing into Saturday morning as well.
Hofmann said she was somewhat surprised by the demographic range of Friday’s customers also, noting she had sold a great amount of both women’s and children’s clothing during the sale.
“We even had a lot of high school and junior high girls who came in,” Hofmann said. “They’re not normally who we’d sell to, but they saw stuff outside and came in to check it out.”
She said many of the women’s clothing items were priced at only $10 which helped them fly off the rack solving her recent hanger shortage.
“That’s better than wholesale pricing for a lot of stuff,” she remarked. “But, again it’s just taking up space so get rid of it.”
Among the sidewalk shoppers on Thursday morning were Kathy Murman of nearby Glenvil and her cousin Christy Oshel of Denver. The women said they were not in town for the A’ROR’N Days events, but had decided to just “stop through” and check out the sidewalk bargains.