NEW YORK—Some big retailers face scrutiny for opening on Thanksgiving, but many small stores have no choice.
Take jeweler Jerry Amerosi, who has three stores in New York’s Staten Island Mall. Amerosi says he'd rather not work on the holiday, and if his stores were on a downtown or neighborhood street, he wouldn’t.
But his lease at the mall requires him to open. That’s the norm for most malls, whose landlords fine retailers up to $1,000 or more if they don’t open.
So, Amerosi’s stores will be open 6 p.m. to midnight. Eight employees will be working, and if this Thanksgiving is like last year’s holiday, they'll have their hands full.
“It was crazy busy,” says Amerosi, who declined to give sales figures for his stores, which include Gerald Peters and Gerald Peters Gold Mine.
Big national retailers and malls began opening on Thanksgiving several years ago. The idea was to cater to people who can’t wait until the day after Thanksgiving known as Black Friday, to start their holiday shopping.
But that has led to criticism of retailers by some labor groups and shoppers for requiring workers to give up time with their families. As a result, some stores have come out publicly to proclaim that they'll remain closed on Thanksgiving. TJX, which owns TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods, even rolled out ads this year that tout its decision to stay closed during the holidays, with a narrator saying “family time comes first.”
