As the holiday spending season draws to a close, there has been a huge schism between hope and reality once again as captured by these two numbers: 3.9% and -3.5%. The first, aka hope, is how much the national retail federation predicted holiday sales would rise by at the start of the holiday season; the second, aka reality, is how much in-store retail sales declined by in the week before Christmas. So what is a despondent retail industry – which unlike the stock market can’t put off delivering results forever – to do? Why bet it all on a huge after-Christmas surge of course.
As USA Today reports, some online sales, including at Target.com and Kohls.com, start on Christmas Day. And for sales die-hards, many Wal-Mart and Kohl’s stores will open on Thursday by 5 a.m. “This is an especially big time for people who got gift cards to come and spend on what they didn’t get for Christmas,” says Sarah McKinney, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman. It is also the single-most popular day to redeem Target gift cards. Then again, one wonders just how hacked those are…
A quick summary of the panicked retailers’ biggest sales incentives and deals to offload all leftover inventory heading into 2014 is presented below (via USAToday)
After paying JUST my property taxes this week (which would buy a cheap new car or good used car every year-and I am ‘middle’ middle class.) there isn’t much left over for ‘seasonal shopping’!…If big retailers wanted to stay in business, they would be more active in the fight against Wash. DC. The tax collection office used to put a pie chart of where taxes went on the back of the bills. They quit after the outcry over 67% going for social services’ ~aka~ welfare…