After being closed for 10 days for 10 days of hard work, Retails in the Morgantown Mall re-opened chock-full of Christmas goods Thursday.
The store has been opening with its Christmas inventory on Nov. 1 for the past three years, Gisele Pernell, manager, said.
She said the early opening has helped sales. The money raised by the store is donated to the Mountaineer Spay Neuter Assistance Program (M-SNAP).
Pernell said it takes a full 10 days to unload the Christmas items collected throughout the year and stored on a tractor-trailer, clean them, test them, price them and “figure out where they go.”
The store was filled with Christmas trees, ornaments, festive mugs, blankets, snowmen figurines, winter village knick-knacks and more.
Black Friday everything in the store will be 25 percent off, two weeks after that everything in the store will be 50 percent off and a week before Christmas, if there’s anything left, it’s 75 percent off, Pernell said.
The store then will be closed until Jan. 1.
M-SNAP has provided vouchers for 10,103 spays and neuters since October 2008.
Pernell said there are many health benefits for animals getting spayed/neutered, including a reduced risk of cancer and a better temperament.
“They do great things,” Dana Johnson, supervisor of Mon County dog wardens, said. “They’re a great group to support.”
She said M-SNAP’s efforts have done a lot to help control the population of unwanted animals.
She said it’s important to spay or neuter animals because cats are euthanized weekly for population control in Monongalia County. The county hasn’t had to euthanized a dog for population control for years, she said, but dogs are still put down for being aggressive to people or other animals.
“We have to put down cats every week it seems like,” Johnson said.
