Photos by Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times

Barbara Fink steams a blouse Thursday at Mimi's Plus in Roanoke County. The store is bringing back layaway.

Lindy Adams of Roanoke browses the racks during a sale Thursday at Mimi's Plus in Roanoke County. The store is bringing back layaway.

The new year screams for change, and that's a resolution that is ringing loud and clear for retailers locally and nationally.

A Roanoke County women's boutique is bringing back layaway. Valley View Mall is seeking to fill vacant space with new kinds of tenants.

Area retailers are finding ways to reinvent their businesses with strategies that they hope will increase traffic after one of the worst holiday sales seasons since at least 1969 and an economic slowdown that could further affect business in 2009.

The gloom and doom tale isn't as bad in the Roanoke and New River valleys as it might be elsewhere in the nation. While sales declined for some area stores in December, others reported slight increases.

Some retailers at the New River Valley Mall in Christiansburg met their sales goals in December. Specific figures were not available, but Rhonda Willson, the mall's marketing director, said a 2007 expansion that brought Best Buy, Old Navy, PetSmart and other new stores helped boost shoppers' confidence in spending during the holidays.

For some merchants, "sales were still up, which was great, but it wasn't like they were through-the-roof up," said Tina Miller, who owns Ladles & Linens in Roanoke and in Lexington. Her husband, Kirk Miller, runs Walkabout Outfitters, an outdoors store, also in Roanoke and Lexington.

At Ladles & Linens this holiday season, shoppers bought larger quantities of lower-priced kitchen gadgets rather than single, higher-priced items such as coffee makers, Miller said.

December sales declined 5 percent at Nature's Emporium, a gift and pet supplies store on Brambleton Avenue in Roanoke County. Manager Summer Sowers wasn't too surprised, considering that in December 2007, sales rose 10 percent.

Because of the economic climate, "we were kind of projecting it," she said.

December sales at Mimi's Plus, a women's boutique in Roanoke County, were flat compared with 2007, though they were down in November. Owner Kelley Clark said more people put off purchases until later in the holiday season to snatch deeper discounts.

To boost business and help her customers budget easier in the new year, Clark plans to bring back layaway, a once-popular service that made headlines late last year when Sears offered it during the holiday season. Layaway rose to popularity during the Great Depression and existed for years, before credit cards. Many large retailers, including Wal-Mart, no longer offer it.

The service requires that customers pay for items in increments and collect their purchase after their final payment. It's been at least eight years since Mimi's Plus offered layaway. By March, Clark plans to have it up and running.

"It will be helpful for these economic times," she said. "In order to stay in business in a viable way, we have to do something."

To be eligible for layaway at Mimi's Plus, customers will be required to pay a third of an item's price upfront. They must pay half of the total balance in 30 days and the remainder 30 days later.

To make room for layaway items, Clark is clearing out space in a back dressing room and a closet at her store at the Forum shopping center.

A Roanoke shopping center is making changes to fill vacant retail space. CBL & Associates Properties, the company that owns Valley View Mall, has asked a Roanoke-area real estate agent, Steve Mullins, for assistance finding doctors offices, physical therapy practices and other kinds of nonretail tenants to take empty space at the shopping center, including the District at Valley View, adjacent to the mall.

"Today, particularly with what's going on, everybody's looking for a way to do better," Mullins said. He said there are five to seven open retail spaces at Valley View, though he has not yet secured tenants.

Shopping centers across the country increasingly have turned to nontraditional tenants, from hotels to residential spaces, in the past several years. With many retailers halting expansion plans because of the economic downturn, these kinds of tenants likely will be more in demand, said Erin Hershkowitz, a spokeswoman for the International Council of Shopping Centers.

"You're getting rents from other types of formats that may not be as susceptible to suffering when times are tough," she said.

Mall spots could help draw significant foot traffic to office spaces and also benefit a shopping center by attracting customers who may shop after a visit to the doctor, for example, Mullins said.

"The climate of retail is changing where we're having to be more creative with how we go into 2009," he said.