Are Businesses Bouncing Back With Start To Holiday Shopping Season?

That's the multibillion dollar question. Are retailers seeing increases in consumer spending as the shopping season when most retailers see the bulk of their revenues?

So far, retailers have seen the barest of increases in sales in brick and mortar stores and shopping malls, while online retailers have done better (that includes those stores that have both online and brick and mortar presence). They saw a 0.3% increase in sales over last year, which suggests that consumer confidence still hasn't recovered.

The heavy discounting and lower prices on certain types of items, particularly LCD TVs, held down overall spending. On Friday, retailers at shopping malls eked out a 0.3 percent increase to $10.69 billion, according to preliminary figures from ShopperTrak, a research firm that tracks sales at 70,000 stores.

TV prices are falling almost twice as fast as they did earlier this year amid a glut. They're selling for anywhere from 15 to 20 percent lower than Christmas 2009.

Earlier buying in November also stole some sales away from the day, said ShopperTrak co-founder Bill Martin. But 2.2 percent more customers came into stores on Black Friday compared with the same day last year. The research firm tracks sales at stores in shopping malls, not big discounters like Wal-Mart and Target, which draw much Black Friday spending.

The National Retail Federation trade group estimated on Sunday that 212 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend, up from 195 million last year, according to a survey it conducts.

A fuller picture on spending will come Thursday when retailers report November revenue figures.

Online, spending rose more than 14 percent from Thanksgiving Day through Saturday, according to IBM's Coremetrics. The average order rose 14 percent and the number of items per order grew 15 percent, fueled by shoppers taking advantage of deals on Black Friday.

My own experience with Black Friday shopping in Bergen County seems to track that. I found that car traffic on the Route 17 and Route 4 corridors to be much lower than a normal Saturday, which means that consumers were elsewhere. Parking for the Garden State Plaza was crazy and traffic did back up on to the Garden State Parkway for the exit that led into Garden State Plaza, but Route 4 and 17 were unaffected by the kind of congestion that usually occurs during the holiday season.

Paramus Park's parking lots weren't nearly as busy at 8am when I arrived there, but the mall was busy and people were definitely buying items. Clothing retailers like Ann Taylor were holding 40% sales, but those sales extended through the weekend. Sears wasn't as busy as I expected, considering that they had some great deals on appliances and televisions.

That is a double edged sword - as businesses gave deep discounts to drive traffic to their stores, but retailers aren't going to make as much if they're discounting - and if people are expecting deep discounts, they are going to come to expect it more regularly and that will hold prices down.

Once again, I did about half my shopping online, and the other half was done at the various malls and local stores. Shopping may have been skewed this year to some extent because the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah has come much earlier than many years - it begins the evening of December 1.

Also, some businesses started their deep discounting sales earlier this year than in prior years. Some started giving Black Friday type deals at least a week ago, if not more, and others were conducting online deep discount sales on Thanksgiving day. Amazon.com gave rotating deep discounts all week long, and will continue doing so tomorrow on Cyber Monday. That will certainly skew sales as well.

We'll have a much better picture in coming weeks.

Retailers Brace For Black Friday And Begin Releasing Sales Fliers

Once again, we're just about two weeks away from the start of the 2010 Christmas buying season, which will be augmented by a severely shortened Hannukah buying season that starts earlier than usual. The Jewish holiday of Hannukah will start on December 1, meaning that folks buying those gifts will have to start earlier than usual and could mean a distortion of retail information overall as buyers surge to stores before December 1 to take advantage of the sales, but lessen as the season wears on.

Retailers make the bulk of their annual sales during this season, and they need strong sales to make up for what has been lackluster results once again. Sales are leaking out online and comparison shopping for the best bargains is something I do well in advance to maximize my shopping experience.


Black Friday Ads has some sales up for Sears, Lowes, Toys R Us, and Kmart. More will follow.

BFADS.NET also has listings posted.

Both sites offer up shopping lists and other features to track information so that you can hunt down the best deals. Thus far, it looks like retailers aren't going for the crash discounts seen in past years because they've done a better job managing their inventories so as to reduce the need for major sales. There are some doorbusters that seem to be huge deals, including one at Sears for a stainless steel French Door refrigerator that is going for $1,099, when it normally retails for $2,399. Target is selling a Tom Tom GPS for $79, which is $100 off the original price.

Home Depot isn't letting these websites carry their doorbusters sales because it claims that it undermines the company's advertising and marketing deals, but they'll probably release that information next week so that people can have a few days to figure out what and where to buy.

Televisions and electronics are again a big deal, and there should be some good sales. I don't think clothing will see as many good deals, but you might score a good deal by looking through the items individually on the sites. Toys R Us is providing gift cards with doorbusters purchases of certain iPod Touches.

At the same time, some retailers are promoting early "Black Friday" sales, which are really nothing more than repackaged sales promotions or aren't really any different from the usual sales offered at other times of the year. It really pays to read the fine print and look for the good deals. They're out there - but you have to know where to look and to do your research.

Black Friday Sales Disappoint

You know that things are awful when media and business outlets are trying to spin a 0.5% increase in spending nationally over last year as a success. That success didn't carry over to the Northeast, where spending actually dropped 5% from last year.

Black Friday sales in the Northeast took a tumble this year, with shoppers spending nearly 5% less than in 2008, according to retail analysts ShopperTrak.

Nationwide, the picture was slightly more encouraging, with bargain-hunters spending $10.7 billion at the checkout counter on the day after Thanksgiving - a marginal 0.5% increase from last year.

"Traffic seemed to follow a familiar pattern this year as retailers were blitzed early in the day by smart shoppers capitalizing on discounted merchandise. Then things began to slow as the day progressed," ShopperTrak co-founder Bill Martin said.

"Looking ahead, we should see some strength early on Saturday, but things will begin to taper off later in the day, which will most likely continue into Sunday."

The doorbuster sales enticed early-bird shoppers to stores across the Big Apple, and the lines were typically long outside the biggest chains with the biggest price cuts.

Many offered "limited-time only" promotions in the hope of getting people to spend like crazy once they walked through the doors.

As I had suspected, people were spending more online than last year as mall traffic wasn't what it had been last year.

Retailers are looking to Cyber Monday to help improve sales, but as more people have procured broadband access at home, they are able to buy at their own convenience and comparison shop like never before.

I managed to do nearly all of my holiday shopping online, but still went to the store because it's far easier and quicker to browse through racks of items than it is to scroll through a store online.

Looking ahead to Cyber Monday, be sure to have your coupons handy. Many retailers have online coupons that allow for free shipping, additional discounts, and other benefits. That includes Coupon Mountain, Coupon Mom, Coupons.com, and Entertainment.com

UPDATE:
The weekend has been disappointing. In fact, it appears that consumers were spending 8% less over last year, and that can't entirely be traced to the Northeast either. Higher unemployment and uncertainties have led people to cut back on spending.

Black Friday 2009

In an annual ritual, I will be heading into the teeth of the Black Friday crowds momentarily in Northern New Jersey's shopping mecca of Paramus. With four major malls and hundreds of major stores and national chains within such a concentrated area, crowds are to be expected.

But are they crowds that are spending lots of money? That's the billion dollar question for retailers.

I will be reporting back later with my findings from Paramus Park and other local malls.

UPDATE:
Well, I've hit the malls, driven the main thoroughfares, and here's my take.

Bricks and mortar retailers may be in trouble. Crowds were out there, but no worse than a typical weekend in Paramus. Finding parking is a good barometer at the Garden State Plaza and Paramus Park, and neither was particularly difficult to do. Mrs. Lawhawk noted that JC Penny's was busy, while some of the other department stores were less so. Kohl's was busy, but no lines to checkout at 11:00AM. If you were a baker, they had a great deal on a Kitchen Aid 4.5 qt stand mixer, that after discounts and mail in rebate was $149.00

Sears was busy, particularly in the electronics and appliances area.

I suspect that many retailers were counting on online business to save the day, and I bought many of my gifts online this year - in fact many more than last year and I did so earlier than in past years. I found that prices actually were lower a few days ago on televisions that I was looking for than today.

I picked this Sharp Aquos 40 inch LED television this week, and while it isn't the slimmest television on the market, it is the most efficient LED television in its size.

I've paired it with an LG BD-270, which is a basic Blu-Ray player that doesn't have the net connectivity that is found in the BD-370.

Here Come Black Friday Ads

I know that Black Friday is a three weeks away, but the sales are leaking out online and comparison shopping for the best bargains is something I do well in advance to maximize my shopping experience.

Black Friday Ads has some sales up for Sears, Lowes, Toys R Us, and Kmart. More will follow.

BFADS.NET also has listings posted.

Some analysts are warning that retailers' deep discounts will hit the bottom line hard and while they might entice more people to come through the doors, they may end up disappointed.

In the new era of tight budgets, consumers are looking for good value on the items they want and need. But instead, many analysts say retailers seem to be taking a different approach: offering ever-more extreme discounts on items they want to get rid of.

The super-low price method of offloading excess inventory has become so commonplace, even among higher-end retailers, that shoppers are coming to the conclusion that many products are just worth less, said brand analyst Robert Passikoff.

“It isn’t just that you learned that there will be sales — there will always be sales — but what it’s done is it ultimately affects the value perception of the product,” said Passikoff, president of the customer loyalty research firm Brand Keys.

Mixed Signals On Black Friday Retailing

Bergen County New Jersey is home to four major malls and literally thousands of shopping options along the Route 4/Route 17 corridors. I got the impression that the stores were not seeing the kind of foot traffic I expected around midday, and that might have been due to the fact that the crowds really came out for the doorbuster sales. This report in The Record reports that the crowds really came out earlier in the day, but that's not what caught my attention.

For all the talk about recession and the economy being in shambles, how exactly are we supposed to reconcile that with a projection of sales increasing 2.2% over last year?

The National Retail Federation, however, has estimated that 128 million people would shop on Black Friday, down from 135 million last year, and will release a new estimate on Sunday afternoon.

The federation predicts that sales will increase by 2.2 percent this holiday season, the lowest increase since 2002 and half the average holiday increase of 4.4 percent. That would make this a very lean year for retailers, who have come to rely on increased sales each Christmas. Many retail analysts believe the NRF estimate is overly optimistic, and that holiday sales could decrease this year for the first time since the NRF has been tracking sales. Some experts predict a wave of retail bankruptcy filings after the holidays.

Black Friday usually isn’t the busiest day in terms of sales volume – the Saturday before Christmas is. But it’s considered an important indicator of the mood of the American consumer, the main driver of the economy.

Throughout the day Friday, shopper after shopper said they were cutting back on gifts for family members, “except for the kids.” That’s good news for executives at Wayne-based Toys “R” Us, who are banking on consumers to spend any available cash on toys and video games for children. Ron Boire, president of U.S. stores for Toys “R” Us said at mid-day that the early returns looked positive, although he couldn’t reveal specific figures. “I feel like we’re off to a good start,” Boire said. “We continue to feel pretty bullish about the toy business and Toys “R” Us in particular, and we’re getting a pretty good read on it today,” he said.

So, a 2.2% increase in sales revenue is bad news. Interesting. While the figure is the lowest increase year over year in quite some time, considering how all the pundits and experts are talking of recession, depression, and a credit meltdown, that's an incredible target figure put out by the Federation. It underlines the resilience of the markets and the pent up demand for items that people have put off. It also suggests that consumers are going to be very price sensitive and will likely flock to discount retailers over higher end retailers. That's bad news for department store chains like Macy's and Lord and Taylor's, but good news for Kohl's, Target, and WalMart.

Shopping online is the X factor in all this, and it could explain why foot traffic in stores was lower this year compared to last year. Monday is expected to be a big day for online shopping, but I think the Black Monday sales online are going to be diluted this year because many retailers were already offering those top sales to consumers as early as the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to jumpstart the holiday shopping season.

UPDATE:
I use the following sites for sales and deals:

Hot Deals Club offers year round tips and leads, but has Black Friday ads and hot deals.

Bfads.net and BlackFriday.info are both quite good at highlighting deals, comparing sales, and tracking the best sales.

A Black Black Friday

There is absolutely no excuse for this, and yet one man lost his life and a pregnant woman had a miscarriage when a WalMart in Valley Stream, New York opened its doors for a doorbusters sale this morning.

A Wal-Mart worker was killed Friday after an ``out of control'' throng of shoppers eager for post-Thanksgiving bargains broke down the doors at a suburban store and knocked him to the ground, police said.

At least four other people, including a woman eight months pregnant, were taken to hospitals for observation or minor injuries, and the store in Valley Stream on Long Island was closed for several hours.

It reopened shortly after 1 p.m. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in Bentonville, Ark., called the incident a ``tragic situation'' and said the employee came from a temporary agency and was doing maintenance work at the store.

``The safety and security of our customers and associates is our top priority,'' said Wal-Mart representative Dan Fogleman.

``Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families at this difficult time. At this point, facts are still being assembled and we are working closely with the Nassau County Police as they investigate what occurred.''

The man, a sales clerk, was trampled to death by hundreds of shoppers looking to save a few bucks on their holiday shopping. The woman was also injured in the mass of people surging into the store.

That's absolute insanity, and it really should raise questions about how and why people are going holiday shopping in the first place. Look, I love a sale as much as the next person, but I'm certainly not going to risk my life for it, and neither should anyone else. It certainly is a reason to do your shopping online.

In fact, both Mrs. Lawhawk and I have done most of our holiday shopping online and both of us have nearly finished our lists, but I always check out the stores in person to see if there's anything else I missed and to get ideas. This year, I checked out Century21 and Filene's Basement at Bergen Town Center, Target in Hackensack, and the Paramus Park mall. Century21 and Filene's Basement weren't exactly packed with crowds, and you could actually walk through the aisles fairly comfortably. People were buying items, but I was there after the initial doorbusters sale ended around noon.

Paramus Park was also busy, but not inordinately so. I was able to get in and out of the malls and their parking lots fairly easily. Sales were good, but nothing really blew my socks off as a must buy item.

Target, on the other hand was quite busy but even there I was able to make my way through the Hackensack store. Many of the low priced DVDs were already sold out and the shelves were not restocked as of early afternoon, which could be a sign that the store was not holding as much inventory as in past years, when DVDs for under $5 could be found readily even into the late afternoon.

In other words, I think that there's serious belt-tightening ongoing, and that means that retailers are going to be in for a very rough season.

UPDATE:
While I didn't shop there, there were lines outside Sixth Avenue Electronics all day long, and the line started forming at their store on Route 4 at Midnight. I guess someone thought that they really had good deals.

Of course, that was not the only store where people lined up.