Lore Croghan, Daniel Dunaief and Phyllis Furman
New York Daily News
NEW YORK - Count on deep discounts and extended store hours as the city's strike-battered retailers scramble to make up lost business.
With transit workers heading back to work, FAO Schwarz will go back to its normal holiday store hours of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. today, said FAO Schwarz spokeswoman Nanette DiFalco.
The fabled Fifth Ave. toy store had been closing at 6 p.m. during the strike to help ease the commute for its workers. It will shut its doors at 6 p.m. again on Christmas Eve.
Further downtown, J&R Music and Computer World plans to run ads in Sunday's papers "to cheer up New Yorkers" and tout "additional values," spokesman Abe Brown told the Daily News.
On top of handing out giveaways to shoppers, the electronics emporium will also continue to offer free parking to anyone who spends $50 at its store, half what it normally requires. The store began the relaxed parking policy during the strike.
Price slashing began yesterday at the Shakespeare & Co. bookstores. Now through the end of the year, the retailer will offer 20 percent off on all of its hardcover books, double its normal discount, Shakespeare co-owner Bill Spath said.
Likewise, women's clothing retailer Barami, which operates four stores in the city, is planning big price cuts starting today or Saturday.
That's on top of the discounts it had already started offering as a result of the strike.
"If we're stuck with some of this stuff after New Year's, we're dead," said Barami President Mike Mahoney, who has lost 20 percent of his business since Tuesday.
But retail experts said slashing prices to drum up sales will hardly offset the massive losses New York stores have suffered.
"There's no way to make up for the lost business," said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Howard Davidowitz & Associates, a national retail consulting and investment banking firm. "It's gone."
Not only did the strike come during a week when retailers ring up much of their sales for the year, it came on top of an already spotty Christmas shopping season.
Leonard Flax of stationery and gift retailer Kate's Paperie said he has no hope of recouping the sales that evaporated with the transit strike.
Sales were down 30 percent to 40 percent each day the subways weren't running. Kate's Paperie makes all its profits for the year during November and December.
Flax has written a letter to his lawyer, asking whether he could pursue a class-action suit against the union.
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