were retail sales for Christmas good this year???

[bobbieinok]

what's the story??? and the pundit comments??

[DRoseDARs]

1. Liberals were busy bombing stripmalls and Big Box stores...

...Many Santas and elves have been killed. Christmas ruined again.



Sales weren't bad, but weren't great either. No hot ticket items really other than the iPuds.

[rsmith6621]

4. Probably Better For the Credit Card Companys

With all that interest and the fact that many wont be able to claim BK on those debts....

[Check12]

2. At Saks Fifth Ave. Great, Target .. not so much nt

[msongs]

3. excellent for China nt

[Warpy]

5. They sucked

But give the pundits some time. It takes time to spin horse shit into gold.

[Nimrod2005]

6. Fair, decent, but not steller....

[Joe for Clark]

7. They went up "supposedly" 8%

There are so many problems with this kind of snap conclusion, I don't know where to begin.

Ten year paper has fallen below two year - absolutley scary.

I have always thought the bonds spoke loudest - they are screaming right now.

Tell me you are not buying into this crap, please.

Joe

[serryjw]

8. We wouldn't know the whole story for a few weeks

but profits must have been terrible. Everything was on sale for over a month at 40-50% off.

[Joe for Clark]

9. That is a factor.

They measure only gross sales, totally meaningless.

A lot of things are totally meaningless at this point.

Point is on target.

Joe

[serryjw]

10. I spent 20 years in fashion

retail and wholesale. They work at about 65% gross profit. So, 50% off only leaves about 15% to run the store...can't be done. Dept stores ( not mass merchandisers) have very little electronics to save them.

[Joe for Clark]

11. Indeed,

Shit runs downhill.

And the margins are impossible.

Sure, that is another factor.

There are many such factors.

Joe

[sabbat hunter]

12. with all the gift cards

its hard to tell immediately as many wait until the after xmas sales to redeem them.

[phantom power]

16. But the stores should already have that money, right?

If somebody purchased a gift card for $50, then the store already has that $50. If anything, waiting a few weeks will show things to be worse, since people will now be actually purchasing inventory with those cards.

[Dissenting_Prole]

17. Yes, but...

now the store is selling $50 worth of merchandise that has been marked down 20-50%. Same cost, but less profit for them. I think Xmas gift cards are a desperate attempt to get that $50 sale that their competitor would have got, even if it means no profit at all from the transaction.

[Lefty48197]

13. Don't know yet. GOP has extended Xmas season until Feb 1.

All those gift cards, and post holiday bargain shoppers you know. We now measure Christmas sales from November 10 to January 30th. Helps keep the numbers up you know.

[fasttense]

14. Really Lefty48197? Do you have a link? n/t

[fasttense]

15. Here's a little news on the subject.

Found it at another forum.

NEW YORK (AP) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which made a big push this holiday season to woo customers with aggressive discounts and marketing, estimated that its December sales will meet only the low end of its forecast.

The world's largest retailer said Saturday that sales at stores open for at least a year, known as same-store sales, are expected to be up 2.2 percent in December. The forecast was for a 2 percent to 4 percent gain. Same-store sales are considered the best indicator of a retailers' health.

The company said that general merchandise sales outpaced demand for food.

Wal-Mart, which stumbled during the holiday 2004 shopping season, came out with a holiday campaign two weeks earlier than last year. The retailer had a solid start to the season, but like many merchants, struggled with shoppers delaying their purchases longer than last year.

http://channels.netscape.com/pf/story.jsp?idq=/ff/story...

[bobbieinok]

18. heard (NPR I think) Costco sales were up quite a bit, Walmart meager