With no holiday rush this year, small businesses struggled. Some owners look to 2024 as a ‘make or break’.

As a small-business owner used to rolling with the ebbs and flows of consumer demand, Sara Villari tries hard to stay optimistic.

But as she assess how 2023 has been for her three Occasionette gift shops, she has to be honest: “It has definitely not been gangbusters.”

Don’t get her wrong, Villari said, the business is doing well enough. It’s growing, in fact, having added a third location in Chestnut Hill earlier this year.

But sales at its 10-year-old East Passyunk location and its younger counterpart in Collingswood have been “flat” relative to 2022. Even the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas — which typically accounts for a third of the business’ annual sales — hasn’t been as bustling as usual.

“I kept reading reports that fourth quarter was going to make it all worth it,” Villari said. “It’s great compared to the rest of the year, but it wasn’t as great as we expected it to be.”

More than 75% of small businesses nationwide report being in a similar boat, saying in a Goldman Sachs survey earlier this month that they hadn’t seen the holiday sales bumps that some experts had predicted.

In the Philadelphia region, several small business owners in the city and suburbs said they, too, feel lukewarm about how their shops have performed during this critical stretch before Christmas. When customers come, they’re spending as much or more as they used to, according to store owners, but fewer people are regularly patronizing their businesses.

“The holiday season has been slower than I anticipated,” said Yvonne Blake, owner of Hakim’s Bookstore & Gift Shop. She has yet to calculate sales relative to last year, but she knows fewer customers are shopping online and coming in the doors of the historic West Philadelphia shop, which this fall received a state marker for being the city’s first and oldest African American bookstore.

“Our business is up but not tremendously,” said Brian Michael, co-owner of Shibe Vintage Sports, which opened a store in West Chester this year and has shops in Center City and Wayne. “We don’t see the big rushes of crowds that we’ve seen in previous years.”

For some Philadelphia-area shops, “next year is going to be such a make or break,” Villari said. “It’s great to support your favorite small business on Small Business Saturday, but if you don’t come out the other 364 days of the year, we aren’t going to be there on Saturday. … That feels truer than ever this year.”

At Keane Vintage in Glenside, owner Kathy Keane looked disappointedly at all the antique Christmas ornaments still on display just days before Christmas. Each year for the past two decades, she has had to restock these unique holiday gifts, sometimes scrambling to find certain vintage items.

But not this year.

“One of the things that really hurt us are people that like to shop online. But then they wonder what happened to our businesses,” said Keane, who only sells her products in-store. In recent years, she’s watched neighboring independent shops close in Keswick Village, and she worries about how long hers will be able to survive

“If people don’t come to shop, we’re going to have to close,” she said.

There’s little consensus — and some conflicting perspectives — on why holiday sales have been lackluster.

“This has been our figurative million dollar question,” Villari said. “We can’t really put our finger on any one thing.”

Across the country, about two-thirds of small business owners said their customers seemed to have less disposable income, according to the Goldman Sachs survey of more than 300 small business owners. Smaller percentages reported that they couldn’t compete with larger companies’ discounts, or that they struggled to reach consumers who favored online shopping.

Several Philadelphia-area shop owners said they’ve offered more discounts and amped up their online marketing in an attempt to draw in customers, but they seem increasingly hard to reach.

“People are always so fast to say, ‘Oh it’s the internet,’ but the internet existed when we opened 11 years ago,” Villari said. “I don’t think that’s the difference-maker.”

She added that something as simple as rain every weekend could have had an impact, especially at walkable locations.

In West Philadelphia, Blake said she thinks some of the bookstore’s older customers are more fearful of going out at night due to public safety concerns. Blake recently shortened the store’s extended holiday hours, because, unlike in prior years, no one was coming in between 6 and 7 p.m.

Small business that were more optimistic had one thing in common: They’re Philly-centric shops that sell a lot of Eagles gear.

For South Fellini, the Philly lifestyle brand, annual sales will undoubtedly be up this year, buoyed by a strong holiday season, said Johnny Zito, who co-owns the business with Tony Trov. That’s thanks to a successful 2023 for the Eagles and Phillies; the recent popularity of their Italian-Market burn-barrel Yule log video and their original holiday song, “If You Give Me Seven Fishes;” and increased foot traffic at the East Passyunk storefront, which reopened last year after a two-year pandemic hiatus.

“Compared to the last few years, it’s been great,” Zito said. In store, they’re seeing “a lot of returning faces, a lot of people who haven’t been around the last year or two.”

At Shibe, Michael said the Eagles’ three back-to-back losses may have dampened the “holiday spirit” for some fans who would have otherwise scooped up more Birds’ apparel. But overall, annual sales are up about 10%, and Michael said he expects this weekend to be “wall-to-wall,” especially with the Eagles playing on Christmas.

Even Buddha Babe, which sells luxe baby and toddler clothes, has gotten in on the fandom.

“I started doing a bunch of Eagles stuff just to stay afloat,” said founder Tina Dixon Spence. “We’ve had to kind of adapt.”

Another key to her success, she said: Not renewing the lease on her Mount Airy storefront this spring and transitioning to selling her custom-made products online and at the Philadelphia Visitor Center and CHOP.

The lack of a brick-and-mortar shop has allowed her to rely less on the holiday season.

“I don’t have to do the flashy display. The thing about baby gifting is that’s year-round,” she said. “The brick and mortar, it was all about creating this winter wonderland” just to get customers in the door.