Oprah touts two-day Payless coupons

Omaha and Lincoln shoppers rushed to Payless ShoeSource stores late Thursday and Friday after Oprah Winfrey announced the availability of a coupon for 50 percent off everything in the store for those two days.

“We had a line up at the register last night, and it continues today,” said a sales clerk at the Saddle Creek Road store in Omaha Friday. “They’re coming in.”

The rush is yet another example of the so-called “Oprah effect.” In May, consumers flooded the pop culture icon’s Web site and KFC restaurants after Winfrey announced a limited-time coupon for a free grilled chicken meal.

Cindy Sura of Lincoln said she jumped in her car about 7 p.m. Thursday after her sister in Omaha called to tell her of the sale. When she arrived at her local Payless store, about 15 customers were shopping — more than she normally sees at the store — and store clerks told her she’d just missed a rush that started right after the late-afternoon showing of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

“They were doing the best they could, going in back, checking on sizes,” Sura said. “Everybody in the store knew about the sale because everybody was telling everybody else.”

She sent a text to a special number, and a coupon arrived at her mobile phone about 10 seconds later. Coupons also could be printed from Winfrey’s Web site.

Sura said she paid a total of $56 for a pair of dress shoes, boots, tennis shoes, a purse, a wallet, two packages of men’s’ socks and a three-pack of children’s socks.

“I had a blast,” she said.

Her sister in Omaha said she paid $110 for 10 pairs of shoes, one belt, one pair of slippers and four packs of socks with three pairs each.

Her sister had found out about the sale accidentally, after going into the Payless store at 72nd Street and Giles Road and discovering the busy scene — shoppers making piles of goods, emptier-than-normal shelves and a line at the counter.

Mardi Larson, a Payless spokeswoman, said that Winfrey’s promotion created “a very busy in-store environment” nationally but that there were no reports of problems on her Web site or in stores.

Contact the writer:

444-1183, christine.laue@owh.com