Friday, July 11, 2025

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Back in 1990, Larry and Nancy Hanker had a ‘Pappagallo’ shop in Ocean City and another in Stone Harbor. Summer months were always a busy time, but as with most summer resort areas, the crowds started to thin after summer, and were virtually non-existent by year’s end.
Or so the Hankers thought.
“No one was open in Stone Harbor on New Years Day at that time,” Larry said in a recent telephone interview. “Everything was closed down.
“But a couple of years earlier, Nancy and I noticed that people were coming down to spend New Years in Stone Harbor. She suggested we open the store. She asked me, ‘What do you think?’”
Larry figured that most men would park themselves in front of a television set and watch football all day.
“’What are the wives doing?’” Nancy asked. “Why not give them a reason to get away and do some shopping?”
Larry agreed wholeheartedly.
“If we’re going to do this,” Larry told her, “we have to promote it first.”
So the Hankers took out a full-page ad in the Herald and a half page in the Press.
“We didn’t say anything to anyone else (merchants) about it,” he explained. “If the idea died, there was no sense bringing anyone else down with us.”
But when they went to open up at 237 96th Street on the morning of Jan. 1, they couldn’t believe their eyes.
“There were about 40 women lined up outside our store,” he said, “but there was not a soul anywhere else around, because no one was open.”
Hanker said they had the same response at their Ocean City location.
“David Hoy came walking by walking his dog and couldn’t believe what he saw,” Larry said. “He quickly opened Hoy’s. He had a great day!”
A couple of other merchants soon followed suit.
“I heard they were pretty busy too,” he said.
It was not a fluke; the following year, according to Larry, sales were even better. Little by little—in both Ocean City and Stone Harbor—people saw what the Hankers did, and more and more merchants opened, and the crowds kept growing.
And why not—with the discounts that were being offered.
“How do you get people to shop right after Christmas,” Larry asked rhetorically. “You make it worth their while, with some items way below cost, at even 75 percent off!”
Today, many stores have their largest volume day of the year, according to Larry.
“I can’t think of a day in summer when you’d see that many people,” he said. “It shows just how many people come to the island for New Years Day, because this is consistently the largest grossing day of the year.”
But not everyone was happy.
“The last thing some people needed to face was a store full of people while they had to deal with the effects of the night before,” Larry laughed.
Times have changed a little, but Larry said New Year’s Day is still among the top three of the year.
“People know that on that day the deals are the best of the year,” he confirmed. “That’s not saying that the men still aren’t watching football, but now the women have some place to go, to use some of that Christmas money that may be left over.”
Most shops open at 10 a.m., but some as early as 9 a.m.
“We found that people love to come down the shore and celebrate the New Year,” he said. “They like to see old friends they haven’t seen since the summer. They like to keep the New Year’s Eve party alive.”
Now, 19 years later, New Year’s Day find the streets filled with shoppers in Stone Harbor, because the prices are never better than on that day, according to Larry.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “How one little discussion turned into a great idea.”