January 7, 2005 06:16 PM
A Little Retail Hustle Paid Off in Holiday Sales
Excerpt: America's merchants hustled for sales this holiday season, marking down a substantial part of their inventories right before Christmas to bring in enough last-minute and postholiday buyers for a decent, if unexciting, 3.1 percent gain over the previous year.
America's merchants hustled for sales this holiday season, marking down a substantial part of their inventories right before Christmas to bring in enough last-minute and postholiday buyers for a decent, if unexciting, 3.1 percent gain over the previous year.
"Everyone did a little better than we expected - but that was because our expectations were so low," said George Strachan, a retail analyst with Goldman Sachs, who labeled this Christmas "humdrum." The results, as measured in a survey released yesterday by Goldman, were not as good as the 4 percent gain reported a year ago, but better than the meager 2.2 percent rise in 2002, the worst in five years.
In the end, apparel was not the disaster some retailing consultants had privately said they feared, and electronics was not the blockbuster others had hoped for.
The continued climb of luxury stores like Neiman Marcus was not a surprise, although Saks Fifth Avenue's 12.1 percent increase in sales in stores open at least a year exceeded analysts' predictions.
The biggest surprise was how well the notoriously fickle teenage and young-20's sector did, with American Eagle Outfitters, Bebe and Abercrombie & Fitch demolishing previous projections. Also, Wal-Mart's last-ditch marketing and limited series of markdowns raised its result from a 2 percent gain to 3 percent and, coming from the world's largest retailer, the gain lifted the entire average.
On the other end, though, the disappointing holiday results at Gap Inc. took away a piece. Although Gap reported just a 1 percent decline, Rachel Schecter, a retail analyst and spokeswoman for Thomson Financial, said because the Gap is so big - it is the country's largest specialty chain, selling close to $16 billion a year - "it does sway the mean by a considerable amount," she said.
Both analysts and deal makers were watching Toys "R" Us to see how the troubled toy seller, which is known to be for sale, would do in its biggest time of year. The company's 2.2 percent decline over the last nine weeks was "pretty much predicted," said Gilbert W. Harrison, chairman of Financo, an investment bank based in New York. "Most of the buyers are looking at it as a fallen company, with tremendous real estate value."
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