Holiday Retail A Wreck Even With Late Spending

It is likely that there were very few winners among retailers this holiday season. Mid-market chains such as Macy’s (NYSE:M) and Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN) probably had bad results. Perennially weak retailers which include Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE:ANF) almost certainly took another big hit.

The holiday retail season will be remembered as being no better than the catastrophic one in 2008. The limited number of winners were companies will big online operations, particularly Amazon (NYSE:AMZN).

ShopperTrack said there was a revival of traffic the week that ended December 26, but it does not appear to have been big enough to offset the disappointing period from November 1 to mid-December. Winter storms made the challenge faced by retailers even worse.

The retail sector of the economy has been seen as a canary in the coal mine. Consumer activity in the last month of year will be used by many experts to predict what the first quarter of 2010 will look like. What the experts have seen is that consumers either stayed at home or spent the minimum when they did shop.

Economists are still fond of saying that the recession is over. That may be true in the business-to-buiness segments of the economy and programs driven by government spending like “cash for clunkers” may have been a temporary boost. But, in the malls and stores where the real people shop, and shop without a government checkbook, 2009 was no better than 2008 for most retail establishments. The consumer is still in hiding.

Douglas A. McIntyre