Hoping for a new job in a new year: New Label Shopper district managers in Du Quoin Wednesday

Bad weather resulted in the cancellation Monday of Terry Frair's flight from New York into St. Louis, the day before the planned start of interviews to fill a handful of retail sales positions at the new Label Shopper store in the Southtowne Shopping Center.

Interviews were moved to Wednesday at city hall in downtown Du Quoin and went until 6 p.m.

Label Shopper will be looking for a full-time manager and assistant, part-time key holders and sales associates for the new store. Label Shopper also has an online store.

"We've had about 15 in already this morning," said Frair at 10:30 a.m. By the end of the day she was looking for "maybe, 50" job seekers wanting to work at the store.

The store will open in the coming weeks just south of the Subway sandwich shop in the Southtowne Shopping Center.

"This is very exciting," said Frair, a district manager from New York who was sitting alongside Indiana district manager Kim Hersley, also in Du Quoin to conduct the interviews.

It was a chance for a new job in a new year for applicant Tiamera Bowen-Hamilton of Du Quoin and for others sitting at a table across the room filling out applications.

The eagerness mirrors the 12 percent December 2013 unemployment rate in Perry County, which compares to 11.4 percent the year before in December 2012.

The store coming to Du Quoin is also a good fit for the economy.

Label Shopper has stores in Galesburg and Ottawa, Ill. The company is based in Albany, N.Y. The store will open at 122 Southtowne Shopping Center in leased space just south of the Subway sandwich shop.

The newspaper was told last week that at Label Shopper, buyers hunt for discount brand name clothing - perfectly good, excellent quality cancellations and over-runs by manufacturers. The company knows where to find them. They know when and where they tend to occur. They also know that manufacturers are forced to sell these famous maker clothing brands at unbelievably low prices to make room in their warehouses.

The store claims discounts of 25 to 75 percent.

Through Label Shopper, miscalculations and mistakes are turned into fashion bargain opportunities.

To preserve their relationship with these vendors, they agree NOT to use any designer or mall store name in their advertising. They are often asked to remove the store name from the item or put a black line through the label.

This is the only difference between their clothes and the merchandise in those other stores. You will find trendy, misses apparel, men's clothing, fashion accessories and famous label handbags on a budget.

Other Job Opportunities

Within the next 4-6 weeks, the newspaper should have information on how to apply for the retail positions at the new Bottom Dollar Cost Plus foodliner in Du Quoin. That information will be important to new applicants and to former employees of the Kroger store.

The newspaper also understands that a dollar store--possibly the Dollar Tree--is interested in leasing the former Best Brands Plus appliance store space alongside the grocery.

The announcement may be several weeks away as work begins to renovate that space for general retail business use. The Best Brands Plus store closed the end of December when the owner Mike Marchetti, decided to return to his former mining career.