Midnight madness shopping in Davis Square tonight

by Matthew Kaplan

Eight Davis Square retailers will stay all night Dec. 6 until midnight for the group’s fourth Midnight Madness.

Cibeline Sariano

To entice customers, participating stores will offer discounts, with some stores offering progressive discounts that become larger later at night, said Davis-Squared owner Melisa I. Christie.

Christie said her store will have a progressive discount on everything in the store, with a maximum of 20 percent off starting at 11 p.m.

Cibeline owner Cibeline Sariano said her business will also have a progressive discount. In addition, customers will have a chance to earn an extra discount.

Shoppers at Cibeline will pick pieces of paper from a hollow snowball kept in a basket at the store, she said. The paper will tell the shopper their prize, which could be an extra discount or a pair of earrings.

Restaurants are joining the stores with specials and some of the stores will also have free food, Christie said. Davis-Squared will provide food prepared by Gargoyles on the Square.

A mostly retail event, this Midnight Madness will feature two food stores, Dave’s Fresh Pasta and Kickass Cupcakes. Neither store has directly participated in Midnight Madness before.

Midnight Madness creates a unique hurdle for Dave’s Fresh Pasta, as the store has to stop selling wine by 11 p.m. because of state law, Dave’s manager Christina O. Theophanis said.

To help the customers take advantage of special discounts, shoppers can order wine at a discounted price after 11 o’clock and then pick up the wine later, she said.

Kickass Cupcakes will give away free shooters, or shots of specialty drinks, said its owner Sara Ross said.

Dave’s Fresh Pasta will have free samples of wine, locally made mozzarella cheese and chocolate, Theophanis said.

Discounts and free food feed the party-like atmosphere in the community that draws people to the event, said Chinook owner Lynn C. Graham.

Chinook will also debut a new line of Nixon watches for the store, she said. “They are guy candy.”
“People are in a good mood, and it’s festive,” Meredith L. Byam, owner of Poor Little Rich Girl, said. “It’s a novelty.”

Graham and Christie said they will be playing especially festive music in their stores.

Graham said she would not be surprised if this December’s event drew 1,000 people to the square. “It’s a party that we’re all involved in.”

Multiple participating businesses expect large crowds this time, Byam said. There should be roughly 500 to 600 shoppers coming through the different stores and restaurants.

“It was mayhem,” Black & Blues co-owner Melyssa B. Byrd said of the last Midnight Madness. “We really were running around like nuts.”

To accommodate the expected large crowds, some stores will have extra employees. Byrd said the store will have two extra employees that night.

Sariano said she might recruit her husband to help at Cibeline that night.

Some store owners hoped the special event, combined with the holiday season, would help drive sales for the participating locally-owned small businesses.

“We’re just hoping to get the shoppers out,” Sariano said.

On Dec. 6, Chinook will start selling Nixon watches, an exclusive watch line Graham said was “guy candy.”

Graham, a DARBI board member and head of DARBI’s marketing team, coordinated the event. For the event, she said she began talking to other local business owners in September. She also coordinated with the Somerville Police to have a presence in the square, so the store’s owners and  workers will have a safe escort home after they are done.