'Tis The Season Start planning now to deck the malls with profits as the owner of a seasonal opportunity.

A part-time business racks up full-time profits for CarlWiederaenders of Des Moines, Iowa, who operates his Calendar Clubstores from mid-September to mid-February each year. With 1997revenues of more than $2.4 million, Wiederaenders has alreadymarked his calendar for this year's holiday season.

As a temporary mall tenant, Wiederaenders is part of a growingtrend: entrepreneurs who capitalize on increased consumer trafficduring the winter holidays, October through December. "[Thebest time to] be in retail is when people are shopping,"Wiederaenders says. "And during the holidays, there are morepeople shopping than at any other time of the year."

Such specialty leasing, also called seasonal selling, startedduring the mid-1980s as a way for malls to fill empty storefrontsand corridors with temporary carts, stores and kiosks."It's an inexpensive way to build a store for yourself andput it in the busiest part of a mall, where thousands of peoplewalk by every day," says Tom Vitacco, national sales directorfor retail licensing at Fannie May Candies.