BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – It’s a special time of year, especially for people in the toy industry.
“Christmas is so exciting,” exclaims Katie Shoriak, owner of Victoria’s Toy Station. “Seeing all the magical excitement on the kids’ faces when they come here to shop is really special.”
Shoriak’s mother opened the store 40 years ago and it was that “magical emotion” that made her follow in her footsteps.
“This store is very special and it really is an experience to come here.”
Shoriak says that over the past five years they have seen a steady increase in customers wanting to shop online instead of going to the store.
Online shopping has increased year after year. According to Adobe Analytics, Americans are expected to spend $241 billion on online shopping this holiday season. A significant increase compared to previous years.
Seeing the trend, Shoriak decided to invest in a website for the store.
“Well, you know, we have a huge group of people who say I can’t see everything here, so I tell them to go to the website,” Shoriak says. “We will wrap it and prepare it for you.”
If you haven’t already guessed, the name of the game in a niche market like this is customer service.
The customer service aspect is just part of what makes this local place stand out from online stores, the friendly greetings, help finding the perfect gift, and gift wrapping like this keeps customers coming back. Especially during the Christmas season.
“They give us the list, the price, they tell us what the kids like.” Employee Sara Smith said. “Then we go and pull out things that we think the kids would like and we wrap them up and have them ready for them.”
“I have grandchildren now, so I’m not part of the crowd that knows what’s hot,” said shopper Denise Claflin. “So coming here helps me a lot.”
Try to obtain that service through a computer screen.
“Shopping locally is very important to the community, and it would be very sad if there weren’t stores to come and go because it’s a great experience,” Shoriak said. “You know that children need to play and put down the iPad from time to time, it is important that they play.”
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