Nanaimo retailers expect consumers to tighten the belt on this year’s back-to-school shopping, but still anticipate strong sales.

Don MacKinnon, general manager of Staples Business Depot on Aulds Road, said people are scaling back on large electronic purchases like laptop computers, but he’s not anticipating much change in the sale of basic school supplies.

“I can’t see us selling very much less from a school supply perspective,” he said.

The store is participating in Woodgrove Centre’s Load the Lockers campaign to ensure underprivileged families, who might be harder hit this year, can send children to school with full backpacks.

Carole de Beeld, owner of Pumpkin Pie Kids Wear in the Old City Quarter, said sales have been steady

“It hasn’t hit as much as I thought it would,” she said. “Maybe people are looking a little closer at prices than they used to. Probably if we’ve done anything, we’ve looked at marking down things a little bit more.”

Nola Dunn, marketing director for Woodgrove Centre, said overall traffic at the mall was up by 4.4 per cent in the second week of August over the same period last year.

“It’s definitely promising,” she said. “We’re happy if we see a one-per cent increase.”

Dunn said retailers have become more creative in their marketing over the past year and the centre is expecting a strong back-to-school shopping season.

Woodgrove is doing its part to promote back-to-school wares through a fashion show on Sept. 12 and a text-and-win contest.

Ryan Callighen, manager of District Clothing Co. in Woodgrove, said sales picked up in August compared with earlier this year.

Nanaimo retailers’ findings mirror the findings in a new Ipsos Reid survey of B.C. consumers.

It found one in four B.C. shoppers have spent or will spend more for the 2009 school year, 44 per cent will spend about the same amount and 16 per cent will spend less.

More than 80 per cent of shoppers also said they would more actively look for sales on back-to-school items and 78 per cent said they’d reuse items they already own more than previous years.

reporter@nanaimobulletin.com