I think this will be a wake-up call to everybody

As Matt Lipan spent Christmas Day with his wife’s family in New Castle, he debated whether they should stay the night with his in-laws and attempt their day-after-Christmas tradition of shopping, or go home to Noblesville ahead of the impending blizzard.

They went home to Noblesville, and the only shopping Lipan had done as of Wednesday afternoon involved a quick stop at Meijer for coffee, eggs, sidewalk salt and a few items for his 10-week-old baby. The family delayed its trip to Edinburgh Premium Outlets, which, like most Simon malls in Indiana, closed early because of the blizzard.

Most day-after-Christmas shoppers in Central Indiana visited grocery stores instead of electronics stores and clothing retailers, who count on post-holiday shopping to ramp up their sales numbers.

The weather hindered stores’ efforts to make one last push for profits before 2012 comes to a close, bringing more disappointment for retailers that generally experienced a lackluster holiday shopping season.

Early numbers released this week in the MasterCard Advisers SpendingPulse report predict that sales likely increased less than 1 percent over last year, the most sluggish gain since the recession. Earlier, sales had been projected to increase 3 to 4 percent.

Stores — and consumers — just might have enough time left to finish the holiday shopping season strong, said John Talbott, associate director of the Center for Education and Research in Retailing at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. His prediction: People still will spend through the rest of this week and the weekend.

“I suspect that what will happen is that the dollars that people have to spend will be distributed more densely over the days they do have to spend it,” he said. “I would expect the malls to be crazy (for the rest of the week). Families have been cooped up together for four days now, so they’re going to be ready to shop.”

Big retailers such as Macy’s could recover, especially if people shopped online while they stayed home from work Wednesday, he said. Local businesses may find it harder to make up for losing a day to snow, even if they picked up a few customers turned away from the closed malls.

While Simon spokesman Les Morris said the company closed its Indianapolis-area malls Wednesday because it worried about the safety of shoppers and employees, some local businesses took a chance on the weather and stayed open to glean a few sales and bolster their image.

By early afternoon, all three Stout’s Shoes locations — in Brownsburg, Carmel and Downtown — had sold only three pairs of shoes. Stout’s two New Balance stores didn’t do any sales, so he planned to shut them at 1 p.m.

Owner Brad Stout said he expected online sales to be better because so many people stayed home, but he hoped the rest of the week would bring even more customers, perhaps because of the storm.

“I think this will be a wake-up call to everybody,” he said, “and they’ll come in and buy a bunch of boots tomorrow and this weekend.”

Keith Payne, who owns North Meridian Hardware near 14th and Meridian streets, found business slightly better. He decided to open his store Wednesday because it has been around less than a year, and he wants the neighborhood to gain trust in it.

Payne described sales as slower than usual, but customers who came in to buy snow shovels and ice melt thanked him for staying open, and he hoped to get a little word-of-mouth advertising from those people telling their friends where they shopped.

“That’s more important than looking at sales,” Payne said.

Grocery stores, gas stations and retailers such as Meijer and Wal-Mart, which carry food and snow-removal supplies, seemed to be the only stores attracting many customers Wednesday. Even those stores lacked crowds, and the customers didn’t stay long.

Stephen Canter, 44, Fishers, tried to beat the storm when he went on an early-morning run to a Marsh supermarket and a gas station near 116th Street and Brooks School Road. He said the weather wasn’t bad when he left around 8 a.m., but as he drove home less than 30 minutes later, the roads had gotten much worse.