Oprah Payless Shoes : ‘Oprah effect’ hits local Payless

Author: admin

30 Oct

Omaha and Lincoln shoppers rushed to Payless ShoeSource stores late Thursday and today after Oprah Winfrey announced a coupon for 50 percent off everything in the store for only those two days.

“We had a line up at the register last night, and it continues today,” said a sales clerk at the Saddle Creek Road Payless store in Omaha.

“They’re coming in.”

Cindy Sura of Lincoln jumped in her car at about 7 p.m. Thursday after her sister in Omaha called to tell her of the sale. When she arrived at her local Payless store, about 15 customers were shopping — more than she normally sees at the store — and store clerks told her she’d just missed a rush that started right after the late afternoon “The Oprah Show.”

“They were doing the best they could, going in back, checking on sizes,” Sura said. “Everybody in the store knew about the sale because everybody was telling everybody else.”

She sent a text to a special number, and coupon arrived at her mobile phone about 10 seconds later. She showed the screen to the cashier after an hour and a half of shopping for her family.

She paid a total of $56 for a pair of dress shoes, boots, tennis shoes, a purse, a wallet, two packages of mens’ socks and a three-pack of children’s socks.

“I had a blast,” she said.

Her sister in Omaha paid $110 for 10 pairs of shoes, one belt, one pair of slippers and four packs of socks with three pairs each.

Her sister had found out about the sale accidentally, after going into the Payless store at 72nd and Giles Road for fun and discovering the busy scene — shoppers making piles of goods, emptier than normal shelves and a line at the counter.

After Sura, a daycare provider, learned of the sale, she called all her friends and sisters and told her daycare parents and “anyone I would talk to.”

“I know that all my friends are going today,” she said.

The rush is yet another example of the so-called “Oprah effect.” In May, consumers flooded the pop culture icon’s Web site and KFC restaurants after Winfrey announced a coupon, available only for 24 hours, for a free grilled chicken two-piece meal. The overwhelming response left some consumers unable to download the coupon from the jammed Web site or waiting in lines at the restaurants. The public relations headache led KFC to retract the coupon and offer a rain-check instead.

Local Payless store employees directed all questions to a corporate spokesperson, who could not be reached Friday morning.

The response to both coupon offers also reflects something else, Sura said.

“In this economy, we all want to get the best deal.”

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