After a one-day pause for Christmas, local shopping mall parking lots and stores filled up again yesterday as consumers visited retailers to return or exchange merchandise, score discounts and spend gift cards and cash.

For more than a decade, shopping on the day after Christmas has been an annual ritual for Jeanne Johnson, Blanche Okimoto, Valerie Yoshida and Kathy Young — four sisters from Mililani and 'Aiea who leave their husbands at home every Dec. 26.

"It's a bonding thing — sisterhood," Johnson said. "Why buy it regular price when you can get it 50 percent off?"

Johnson and her siblings started the day with a 7 a.m. breakfast at the Pearl Highlands Center food court, Then, after a stop at Price Busters for half-price Christmas wrapping paper and decorations, it was off to Pearlridge Center to hunt for more deeply discounted Christmas decor.

"The thing is we party on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so we're hurting right now," Johnson said.

According to a Mainland survey commissioned by the International Council of Shopping Centers and UBS Securities LLC, 18 percent of consumers surveyed — or nearly one-in-five — said they planned to shop yesterday.

MALLS OPEN EARLY

Chicago-based retail intelligence firm ShopperTrak said Dec. 26 was the sixth-busiest shopping day of the holiday season last year, and predicted the date would again rank No. 6 this year.

ShopperTrak said the day after Christmas accounts for 3.7 percent of shopping traffic from the roughly monthlong holiday shopping season that starts the day after Thanksgiving, compared with 2.7 percent for the average day during the period.

Many malls opened early yesterday, and some retailers aimed to lure shoppers back for special discounts to clear merchandise in preparation for the new year. But many consumers hit stores to give back gifts they didn't care for or fit into.

Diane King of Kaimuki previously hadn't shopped on the day after Christmas, but yesterday found Pearlridge Center packed while trying to exchange six pairs of shorts that didn't fit her youngest grandchild.

"The lines are long ... parking is the pits," she said.

Kapolei resident Charisse Freitas yesterday was busy returning merchandise she bought before Thanksgiving as potential gifts. But her main purpose for being at Pearlridge was to take her 14-year-old daughter, Demi-Cherie, to buy a Nintendo Wii game system at Toys "R" Us with cash she received for Christmas.

GIFT-CARD USERS

"They only had five left," Demi-Cherie said of the Wii.

Other shoppers descended on retailers to spend gift cards, an increasingly popular holiday gift.

According to the International Council of Shopping Centers, nearly $1 of every $5 in holiday gift spending is on gift cards that won't be cashed in until after Christmas.

Paula Sussex, owner of local footwear retailer Sandal Tree, said this year was the first year her company began selling gift cards, and she expects to see merchandise sales using cards mainly later this month and in January.

Sussex said the Sandal Tree store at Ala Moana Center wasn't particularly busy yesterday morning despite the mall opening at 7 a.m. However she said there seemed to be a lot of early shoppers at the mall in response to Macy's advertising special discounts, mainly for clearance merchandise bought yesterday before 1 p.m.

At the Pearlridge Macy's, lines at several cash registers shortly before noon were five to 20 customers deep.

Fred Paine, Pearlridge Center general manager, said that when the mall opened at 8 a.m., two hours earlier than a normal weekday, the parking lot looked like it does during a midday crush. "It was wild," he said.

Brenden Davis, from Hickam Air Force Base, said he felt fortunate to get a parking space without a wait on the upper deck of Pearlridge's parking structure outside Macy's so he could return a GPS device at the mall. Earlier in the day, it took him 20 minutes to park at Toys "R" Us so his daughter could exchange a Nintendo DS game. That followed an excursion to a GameStop store in Moanalua, where Davis said it took 20 to 30 minutes to get through the cash register line. "There were a lot of people in there," he said.

Reach Andrew Gomes at agomes@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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