Holiday Season Off To A Raging Start... Or Not?

The shopping season is off to a healthy start, at least, so retailers are boasting in today's USA Today:

The nation's retailers had a robust start to the holiday shopping season, according to results announced Saturday by a national research group that tracks sales at retail outlets across the country.

According to ShopperTrak RCT Corp., which tracks sales at more than 50,000 retail outlets, total sales rose 8.3% to about $10.3 billion on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, compared with $9.5 billion on the same day a year ago.
ShopperTrak had expected an increase of no more than 4% to 5%.

"This is a really strong number. ... You can't have a good season unless it starts well," said Bill Martin, co-founder of ShopperTrak, citing strength across all regions. "It's very encouraging. When you look at September and October, shoppers weren't in the stores."

But will shoppers keep up the pace, or are they just waking up at the crack of dawn (both JCPenney and Kohl's opened at 4 a.m. this year) to get the best bargains and get more of their shopping over with? A quote from a Reuters "Black Friday" story suggests this might be the case:

"If you're going to shop for the holidays, you might as well shop at 50 percent off today," said Annabelle Frausto, a 22-year-old college student shopping at the Glendale Galleria mall near Los Angeles. "Twenty percent off is not worth it -- they'll be having that for the rest of the year."

The National Retail Foundation confirmed today, in a San Jose Mercury News piece, that it is still projecting a 4% growth in sales this Christmas season, which is the weakest increase since 2002. Retailers, like Wal-Mart for example, have been cutting prices for weeks (in Wal-Mart's case, it began slashing toy prices at the end of September). With discounts that good, why wouldn't you want to wake up at 3 am to go shopping? (I'm only sort of joking.)

Personally, I slept in on Friday, but curiosity couldn't keep me from going to the malls later on that day. However, by the time 7:30 p.m. rolled around, and I drove over to the Green Hills Mall in my hometown, Nashville, Tenn., I didn't have too much trouble finding a parking spot. It seemed most people had woken up early to get the best prices. The Apple store was crowded of course. I was greeted with a pamphlet telling me which iPods were on sale, a whole whopping $30 off. I wandered into AnnTaylor LOFT, and after I bought a few items, I asked the salesperson how busy they had been that morning.

"Busy," she replied. "But not as much as we thought. I'm not sure what that means for the rest of the holiday season."

That's a pretty nice way to sum it up. From the various articles I've read today, it seems to be it's uncertain how well apparel retailers will fare this holiday season.

Electronic retailers (Best Buy, Circuit City, Electronic Express), seem to be hotter destinations, but at what cost? After all, according to this Tennessean article from earlier this week, profits only start after noon for these stores, which offered deep discounts on the latest TVs, computers and other gadgets.