Brick-and-mortar locations use jolly old elf to help lure customers

It's 5 p.m. at Nordstrom's flagship store in downtown Seattle, and there's a 2½-hour wait to see Santa Claus.

This isn't a scene from "Miracle on 34th Street." Customers get text-message alerts about their spot in line, and they can consult the schedule if they're seeking a black, Asian or sign-language Santa. At Macy's in New York's Herald Square, visitors can register online for their visit to the 13,000-square-foot Santaland. Other retail centers have spruced up their Santa villages with interactive "Frozen" and "Shrek" landscapes.

In 2014, retailers are relying more heavily on the jolly old elf to drive customers into stores, and they're using increasingly sophisticated tools to make him as enticing as possible.

Even as the economy rebounds, shopping-mall foot traffic declined last month. That's putting pressure on stores to offer in-person experiences. After all, Santa's lap is one thing that can't be ordered on Amazon.com.

"Santa is more important," said Jan Kniffen, chief executive officer of J. Rogers Kniffen Worldwide Enterprises, a consulting and equity-research firm in New York. "Anything you can do to get that person to show up."

Santa's retail career began in the 1860s when Rowland H. Macy brought him in to help hawk dry goods at his New York shop. The Macy's Santaland was born in 1902, and it grew to attract about 300,000 visitors a year to the 34th Street store in Manhattan.

The concept caught on with retailers, and St. Nick is now a fixture everywhere from Wal-Mart to Bass Pro Shops - with kids waiting in long lines to share their gift lists. A gun range in Georgia even lets patrons take Santa pictures with a selection of firearms.

Across the country, 850,000 kids visited Santa over the post-Thanksgiving weekend alone this year, according to an estimate by the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade group. Retailers count on the visits to drum up gift purchases and impulse buys. About 70 percent of shoppers planned to do some holiday shopping while they were at the mall to see Santa, an ICSC survey found.