Tulsa World: October sales offer relief to merchants

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October sales offer relief to merchants
Retailers hope to avoid the fire sales of last Christmas.

Shelly LeRoy, an employee at a BJ's Wholesale Club store in Camp Hill, Pa., loads a cart with a customer's purchases Wednesday near a checkout counter. October retail sales offered some relief to merchants across the nation. Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press

By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO Associated Press
Published: 11/6/2009 2:25 AM
Last Modified: 11/6/2009 5:46 AM

NEW YORK — October's retail sales results, the best performance since April 2008, show that Americans are spending a little more. But will they be willing to pay full price this holiday season?

Stores are heading into the period with slashed inventories, determined not to have the fire sales that characterized last Christmas. But shoppers are still facing tight credit and a weak job market and might wait for fat discounts or not buy at all. That game of chicken will determine the holiday winners and losers.

"Shoppers are still being cautious, but we are seeing some signs of recovery in the economy," said Carl Steidtmann, an economist at Deloitte Research, who forecasts holiday sales will be unchanged from a year ago.

Sales at stores open at least a year rose 2.1 percent in October, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers-Goldman Sachs tally, compared with a 4.2 percent drop in October 2008. The October results beat estimates for a 1 percent gain and followed a surprising 0.6 percent increase in September.

Sales at stores open at least a year are considered a key indicator of a retailer's health.

For the holidays, more consumers will be paying full price and shopping earlier than a year ago because they are afraid the merchandise they want won't be there later, Steidtmann believes. But he also noted that although reduced stock will help boost store profits, it will likely limit sales as merchants run out of products.

Others such as Ken Perkins, the

president of the retail research firm Retail Metrics, say it's going to be hard to get shoppers to pay full price unless they really want the item badly. "Consumers are still extremely price-sensitive," he said.

As merchants announced their second consecutive monthly sales gain after more than a year of declines, the results showed that shoppers still were not splurging, restrained by worries about the economy. But the improving figures all pointed to sales momentum. By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO Associated Press

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Aggie, (11/6/2009 10:21:44 PM)

Who's doing the buying? All the rich bankers who got millions of dollars from their buddies in Congress? The rest of us are just buying what we need.

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