Back To School Shopping

Summertime’s winding down and it’s time for the kids to head back to the classroom. Due to >our media partnership, the Census Bureau sent along some statistics from the Monthly Retail Trade and Food Services on Back to School shopping. Americans spent $7.6 billion at family clothing stores in August 2008. Only in December were sales significantly higher than August. Sales at bookstores last August totaled $2.4 billion, an amount approached only by sales last January. So, this is a big buying season if you have kids.

Throughout the United States in 2006, there were 25,430 family clothing stores, 6,417 children and infants clothing stores, 26,699 shoe stores, 9,425 office supply and stationery stores, 23,270 sporting goods stores, 10,989 bookstores and 9,969 department stores. Here’s Rockville Living’s Directory for comparison.

We set out with our school shopping lists and tried to Buy Rockville. We could easily purchase most of our elementary and middle school lists within the City limits, especially at Staples on Rockville Pike. We also needed to stop in Office Depot (which is right on the border), and if need be there’s always all the CVS stores for some of the school supplies. We couldn’t find backpacks to our liking on Rockville Pike so we needed to go to Target, which is also just outside the City limits or all the way up in Gaithersburg. While we were there, we bought socks. You can get sneakers at Pay Less but there really aren’t any other kid shoe stores in Rockville, so that requires a trip to a department store too.

I’m not sure I could purchase everything in Rockville but if I looked real hard in lots of locations, I might. We visited five stores in one day which was enough!

How did you do Buying Rockville for Back to School?

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