Holiday sales may be weakest in 30 years
Advertiser Staff and News Services
Despite last-minute gift buying and retailers' best efforts to woo shoppers much earlier with deep discounts, what could end up as the worst holiday shopping season in more than three decades sputtered to a close yesterday.
Barring a crush of post-Christmas spending, the holiday season will likely be the weakest since at least 1970, economists said.
"We're still seeing this choppy performance that has been the scene throughout the whole season," said Michael Niemira, a vice president of Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, which has tracked weekly and monthly retail sales since 1970.
Niemira said he expects November and December sales at stores open at least a year to grow just 1.5 percent over 2001, a slower pace than last year's increase of 2.2 percent. Same-store sales growth — considered the best gauge of a retailer's performance — has shrunk each year since 1999, just prior to the economy going into recession.
In Hawai'i yesterday, thousands of shoppers flocked to the stores for last-minute purchases, but some mall managers said business was soft.
Dwight Yoshimura, general manager of Ala Moana Center, said mall traffic definitely slowed yesterday. "I think it peaked (Monday)," he said.
The mall's closing hour was cut down to 6 p.m. yesterday, from 11 p.m. through Monday. But tomorrow, hours will be extended to 9 p.m. as retailers attract consumers back to stores with day-after-Christmas sales.
Still, like Vegas gamblers letting it all ride one more time, hundreds of local shoppers tested their luck on the eve of The Big Day.
Warren Leong was one of those, beating the Christmas demon one more time — with 14 hours to spare.
Holding a bulging shopping bag in each hand yesterday in Kahala Mall, Leong was the epitome of holiday optimism.
"Just today I got the Christmas spirit, so I felt like buying," said Leong, a 59-year-old engineer from Hawai'i Kai. "I always wait for Christmas Eve. Men are like that."
Alison Hunter packaged her own gifts — in the mall parking lot in her car with the air-conditioning turned on.
"I had a couple of people, mostly people from work, I had to get stuff for," said Hunter, a 26-year-old Hawai'i Kai resident, sticking labels onto gifts.
She had been too busy to get all her shopping done until the last day. Of course, she wasn't alone.
"It's actually not that bad," Hunter said. "I think there are a lot of people getting those last minute gifts. This is it."
Still, in a pessimistic view of nationwide consumer spending ShopperTrak, a Chicago-based retail consultant, said it now expects retail sales for December alone to plunge 5.5 percent.
"American consumers are worried: They're worried about their jobs, they're worried about increased taxes on the municipal and state level, they're worried, at least initially, about the potential for war," said Jordan Kaplan, a managerial sciences professor at Long Island University in New York.
Despite strong sales the weekend after Thanksgiving and last Saturday, consumers for the most part reined in spending.
Retailers had hoped that strong sales the weekend before Christmas could save this holiday season.
Shoppers spent $7.2 billion on Saturday, making it the single biggest sales day of the season, ShopperTrak said.
Sales for that day beat the sales from the day after Thanksgiving and rose 4.5 percent compared to the Saturday before Christmas last year, ShopperTrak said.
For the weekend before Christmas, retailers took in $12.6 billion, 1.6 percent more than the weekend before Christmas in 2001, ShopperTrak said. But they had hoped for even better.
The Baltimore Sun and Advertiser Staff Writers Mike Gordon and Andrew Gomes contributed to this report.
