SCRANTON — A longtime Boscov’s shopper received a special treat for her patronage to the store.
Newton Twp. resident Ellen Raino – who has been visiting the downtown department store for more than 30 years – was randomly selected out of more than 3,800 entries from the company’s 50 stores to win a $5,000 Home Makeover Shopping Spree.
“My mother and I would come every single day on lunch,” Raino said. “We would just come to shop and walk around.”
The selection and quality of products along with the affordable prices have kept her coming back throughout the years, Raino said.
“To have someplace where you can kind of one-stop shop in this community, I think is really something that is needed and appreciated,” she said.
Raino scanned a QR code to enter the shopping spree contest during a trip down the escalator while shopping for her son, Liam’s, college graduation.
Among her haul was luggage she plans to put to use during a trip to Greece with her husband, Gregg; a sectional, and mattress, box spring and frame.
Jim Boscov, chairman and CEO of Boscov’s, stressed the company continues to thrive amid a challenging economic landscape.
“We’re very fortunate that we’re growing at a time when other department stores are struggling,” he said. “We really attribute it to our people. We have wonderful people who have established relationships in the community. Our customers can find everything they need and they know the people here. It really is a much more personal relationship than with a lot of companies.”
Boscov noted the Scranton location has about 20 employees who have been employed there since the store opened in 1993.
“We celebrate the fact that we have people here from Day One,” he said.
Additionally, the store in downtown Wilkes-Barre remains a strong presence in the city 45 years after it opened.
“We moved into an existing Fowler, Dick & Walker store in 1980,” Boscov said. “It’s an older store — so it takes love and care — but it does very well and that’s another wonderful community.”
Boscov’s will open a store in Rochester, New York — the company’s 51st — at the end of October, Boscov said.
“We typically try to open one store a year if we find the right location,” he said. “If we don’t, we wait a year. When we open a store, we ask about 50 people a week to come up from other stores to help four weeks before the store opens and two to three weeks after it opens because I don’t think you can hire 200 new people, hand them a book and say this is the Boscov’s culture. When you work side-by-side with people for six weeks, they get a sense of who we are. I think it’s the culture of the company that allows us to continue.”
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