Early Forecasts Lower Holiday Retail Expectations
Sep 29th, 2008 | By Dawn R. Rivers | Category: OperationsSince it’s going to be October before the week is out, it should come as no surprise that retail industry types are starting to talk about those all-important fourth quarter sales and, specifically, about the upcoming holiday shopping season. And, since most of the economic news seems pretty dismal these days, you might expect early forecasts to be predicting a blue Christmas for retailers.
But things aren’t quite as cut-and-dried as all that for microbusiness retailers. On the one hand, the National Retail Federation is predicting a slow holiday shopping season, with just 2.2% growth over last year’s numbers. That is certainly a marked decline from the 4.4% ten-year average for holidays sales. At the same time, a recent survey from Shop.org found online retailers feeling “cautiously optimistic,” because 72% of them believe online retail is better suited for riding out an economic slowdown. Ultimately, holiday shoppers are going to be hunting for bargains, regardless of sales channel. Microbusiness retailers are likely to fare best if they can get creative in order to find ways to save their customers money, without too seriously squeezing their own margins, through the end of the year.
