Posted on 12/26/2008 5:34:47 PM PST by An Old Man
Edited on 12/26/2008 5:35:48 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Price-slashing failed to rescue a bleak holiday season for beleaguered retailers, as sales plunged across most categories on shrinking consumer spending, according to new data released Thursday.
Despite a flurry of last-minute shoppers lured by the deep discounts, total retail sales, excluding automobiles, fell over the year-earlier period by 5.5% in November and 8% in December through Christmas Eve, according to MasterCard Inc.'s SpendingPulse unit.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Amazon is having a good season because they still have nowhere to go but up. Online retail is still in its infantile stage - see Gartner, Forrester, etc. for date reporting.
Add to their success this year, Amazon had very lucrative arrangements with partners and the addition of new partners, all that Amazon receives sales credit.
LOL... I was looking at your above list and though, Gold Circle.
Remember Zayres.
I don’t know how many were buying but Wasilla traffic looked like big city USA on Christmas Eve. I went to Sportsmans Warehouse and did my best to support the local economy. Maybe its just wishful thinking but the Wasilla economy seems to be doing ok compared to what I hear in the lower 48. I shouldn’t say this but my business is doing very well, just hope it doesn’t change after the annointed one takes over. BTW I added a SOCOM 16 to my collection last week just to be on the safe side.
an 8 percent drop is 1/12 the way to zero which is the end of the human race. plus most businesses are leveraged at least 2 to one and some even more than that. 2 to one leverage means 8 percent feels like 16 percent. so yes 8 percent is plunging. it is like putting 10 percent down on your house and having home values drop by 15 percent. then you have lost 100 percent of your money plus even more.
an 8 percent drop is 1/12 the way to zero which is the end of the human race. plus most businesses are leveraged at least 2 to one and some even more than that. 2 to one leverage means 8 percent feels like 16 percent. so yes 8 percent is plunging. it is like putting 10 percent down on your house and having home values drop by 15 percent. then you have lost 100 percent of your money plus even more.
Extremely well-written. Thanks.
On-line purchasing is shown on the graph as down 2%, so there is a negative change there. I'm not sure that "lying" is a good term to use.
Plus I couldn't find whether these numbers are adjusted for inflation. Whether or not they are, with the patently false CPI rates used to calculate real dollars, the numbers are grim.
Putting people out of work and closing down businesses accomplishes what exactly? Isn’t that what the Democrats are already doing?
It is part of Macy's. No one has mentioned Montgomery Wards, also deceased.
Watch the MSM back off on these stories after January 20.
On a similar subject anyone remember the fast food restaurants Cindy's and Judy's? Story goes two of Dave Thomas’ first executives ( and good friends ) left Wendy's soon after it started and both opened chains of restaurants named after their daughters. Both had almost the exact same menu and setup as Wendy's but not the same quality. They were only around a few years in the late 70s.
Ah yes, Zayres! Good one!
Stores are expected to post an 18.8 percent decline in fourth-quarter profits, marking the seventh consecutive period of profit declines, according to Ken Perkins, president of research company RetailMetrics LLC. He expects profits to keep tumbling into the first quarter, with predictions so far of a 10.4 percent drop.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081224/ap_on_bi_ge/last_minute_shopping_6
That is 30%.
I work retail and from where I am standing...seems about right. :-(
I also read posted here yesterday that a letter was sent to the new 0bama administration asking for some sort of bailout or salestax holiday every 3 months.
“EJ Korvettes - had a great record department”
In the early 70’s, that’s where we always headed.
Thank you.
I don’t remember if it was Drucker that wrote about negative business trends being self-reinforcing or not, but the idea is one I have been thinking of for days now. A downturn becomes self-fulfilling and intensifies without intervention/direct correction.
I’ve read on here that a few of the major Red Chinese shipping corporations have nearly halved the number of tankers/ships sailing out with goods. I also read that over 2600 Chinese factories have stopped their output/closed, but I don’t know the percentage of companies that is. The number of ships with goods setting out for other countries, namely the US, gives you pause, but the knowledge we have about business cycles and the present foolishness politicians have gotten us into can be met with pessimism or optimism; it’s our choice, and one we are going to have to make consciously, since Obama is outclassed by capitalism.
We can discuss the stories of incidents of shopping on here, but all of us would agree that something is in the wind, like knowing in your bones when it’s going to snow.
Do you know Sarah :)
Orbachs, I. Magnin, Bulloch’s, Broadway, Woolworth’s, Treasury...
Plus all the other ones that have been swallowed up by the suckage that is Macy’s.
AHHH, but the sale of global warming “credits” is up! What a way to assuage guilty consciouses!
I agree 100%. This December has seen a huge spate of snowstorms in the northern USA east of the Rockies, and that has tremendously killed retail sales as people just can't even go OUT to buy things. It is small wonder why Amazon did such land-office business?
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