KANSAS CITY, Mo. — This holiday season, Santa was a little more generous than anticipated for area stores.
According to NBC news, shoppers spent more than online and in stores than last year with overall holiday retail sales, excluding automotive sales, increasing 3.4%.
"It's really been fantastic," Brookside Toy and Science owner Jim Ward said. "We've had a great year. I think the 24th might have been record-setting. I've really never seen that many people out."
The day after Christmas had Brookside Toy and Science packed with shoppers looking for additional gifts as well.
"Usually, it's pretty quiet the day after Christmas but today there's been just a steady flow stream of customers," Ward said.
Lady Bye in Brookside also experienced a post-Christmas surge.
The women's boutique recorded record holiday sales too despite Thanksgiving falling late in November this year.
"We really got creative on how we were going to bring people into the stores," Lady Bye Assistant Manager Anna Murrow said. "We looked at our sales from last year and what people were liking the most and what sales did the best."
Many stores continue sales post-Christmas to entice customers through the doors. Lady Bye is offering a buy-one-get-one-half-off deal in hopes of luring in more customers.
"With having Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday and all of these other titles and deals you can get, that's the direction that everyone is heading in," Murrow said. "Just to constantly make you feel like you're getting the best price on something."