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As fewer cross border, Bridgeton merchants forced to adapt
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Customers shop earlier this month at the North Laurel Street general store in Bridgeton, Cumberland County. Owner Jose Arellano says he used to sell about 50 Spanish language CD and DVD titles per week. Now, ‘I sell three or four a week,’ he said. ‘It made no sense to have them there at all.’
Photo by: Michael Ein
BRIDGETON - In Jose Arellano's North Laurel Street general store, there used to be a special nook - with a television overhead playing Mexican music videos - that featured hundreds of CD and DVD titles for sale.
It was a popular destination inside the food market, which caters mostly to the neighborhood's Hispanic community. There were almost 2,000 films from which to choose, and Arellano said he would normally sell about 50 every weekend.
Nowadays, though, customers are more likely to find Styrofoam cups and instant noodles on the racks that once stocked titles such as "Perro Rabioso" or "La Apuesta." The TV is still there, playing music for diners sitting next to the store's small grill. The music and movies, however, were put away in storage.
In the small, working-class city of Bridgeton, an enclave of Hispanic immigrants who work for the region's farms and processing plants, the recession has robbed local merchants of many seasonal customers. Reports indicate a steep drop in the number of Mexican immigrants coming into the United States: Census data from Mexico show a 25 percent reduction in overall emigration, and the number of apprehensions for illegal border crossings reported by U.S. Border Patrol agents has declined steadily.
Most Hispanic-owned businesses in Bridgeton, have adapted quickly to their seasonal customers' sudden absence. Arellano, for instance, quickly noticed his regular shoppers were overlooking commonly purchased items for less-expensive alternatives.
The CDs, he said, were just gathering dust.
"They weren't moving," Arellano said as he sat behind the counter, ringing up a sale for a man buying a cut of meat. "I sell about three or four a week. It made no sense to have them there at all."
As the country continues to grapple with the recession, many small businesses nationwide have struggled to stay afloat. Some have managed to do so by raising prices or cutting back on inventory. Others haven't been so lucky.
According to a June report from credit agency Equifax, the number of commercial bankruptcies in March doubled from the same month last year. The pinch is being felt in all geographic regions of the U.S., the report said, with states such as Georgia, Illinois, Texas and California leading in the number of bankruptcy filings.
The seasonal influx of immigrants in past years has provided a healthy boost to several economic sectors in Bridgeton, where most Hispanic merchants are able to offer a lower a sales tax rate thanks to the city's Urban Enterprise Zone. Aside from the relatively cheap labor the workers - many of whom are undocumented - provide, their presence has also benefited businesses across the city, from the gas stations lining North Pearl Street to the small neighborhood stores such the one Arellano has run for nine years.
But this year, merchants say the loss of seasonal customers has been noticeable.
"There's no doubt about it," said Rigo Puentes, who manages his parent's deli in the city's Irving Avenue shopping complex. "The economy is slow. People are moving back. That's how bad it's getting."
Despite the drop in the number of seasonal patrons, most Hispanic merchants who offer a diverse array of goods said the effect on their volume of sales has not been too dramatic. Both Puentes and Arellano said sales in May dropped about 15 percent to 20 percent from the same time last year.
While that decline is more substantial than the averages being reported by national retailers, who last month reported a 4.8 percent drop in same-store sales from the same time last year, it is nonetheless dwarfed by far steeper declines in other retail sectors. Electronics retailer Best Buy, for instance, reported earlier this year that its earnings in December 2008 fell by 77 percent from the same time last year.
Bridgeton's Hispanic merchants said the impact has been more noticeable in the purchase of goods their working-class customers would perceive as luxuries in lean times. That includes CDs and DVDs, and other items such as clothing or footwear.
That change in spending was likely a contributing factor in the closing earlier this year of a Mexican record store on North Laurel Street in the city's downtown. That store, however, has been the only Hispanic-owned shop in the city that folded because of the recession, Bridgeton Planning and Development Director John Barry said.
But other specialty shops are also struggling. Hilario Soriano, 50, who for 15 years has operated a record store on North Pearl Street across from the Immaculate Conception Church, said sales of CDs and DVDs have dropped a staggering 80 percent.
For him, the slowdown started about two years ago, Soriano said, soon after the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a set of raids in Bridgeton that put many undocumented residents on edge and kept them indoors.
Before that, Soriano said he would ring up about $5,000 in sales each week. The fear caused by the raids, which was soon followed by the economic slowdown, brought his weekly sales down to about $1,000.
"Before, people would come two or three times a day," Soriano said. "Now, they come once a day. People tell me they don't have work, and that they have to save to send money back home."
Despite such an abrupt drop-off in business, Soriano, like other fellow merchants, said he was going to try to survive. His sense of optimism, he said, is buoyed by the recent discussions in Washington on immigration reform.
"I feel like next year is going to be good," Soriano said. "(President Barack) Obama is doing good. I feel - and my people, too - (that) there is a good economy for them to make a life. They'll be able to go out in the street and not be afraid of anything."
U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions in Southwest
2005: 1,171,391
2006: 1,071,979
2007: 858,737
2008: 705,022
Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection
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Posted in Breaking, Cumberland on Monday, July 13, 2009 5:00 am Updated: 11:35 am.
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