Holiday Sales

Holiday sales are expected to rise 3 percent in November and December compared to the last two months of 2011, a trade group for the shopping center industry is forecasting. The expected increase is pegged to an index measuring sales at chain stores open at least a year. The forecast released Tuesday by The International Council of Shopping Centers also calls for slight increases in sales at shopping centers and in sales at stores selling general merchandise, apparel and accessories, furniture and other items.

When snowflakes began falling Monday afternoon, the commotion near Mondawmin Mall slowed. Children pointed to the sky. Shoppers, their shoulders previously hunched against the cold, stood to take in the scene. Inside, shoppers buzzed through stores buying last-minute gifts, extra wrapping paper or the final ingredients for holiday meals and desserts. At The Esquire barber shop, men and boys waited for a chair and a fresh cut while talking of Christmas Eve church trips and parties ahead.

Domingo Catalan powered through the Thanksgiving night crowds to get his children toys. He methodically checked all the boxes on his relatives' wish lists on Black Friday. And before he goes to work as a data analyst for a government contractor on Cyber Monday, he expects to look for online deals to have shipped to his brother's family in Germany. So whom was Catalan, a Crofton resident, shopping for on Sunday morning at Bass Pro Shops at Arundel Mills? "Me," he grinned, pausing to jerk his thumb toward his chest as he put an Under Armour winter jacket and fishing gear into the back of his Ford pick-up truck.

For the first time in more than a decade, Baltimore sports fans wished for orange more than purple as they made their Christmas lists for Robbie Davis Jr.'s memorabilia shop in Timonium. In the wake of the Orioles' first winning season and first playoff appearance since 1997, interest in the club has remained high throughout the holiday shopping season. "It totally has," said Davis, owner of Robbie's First Base, which has peddled Baltimore memorabilia since 1989. "To the point where Ravens stuff has taken a back seat to it. " From season tickets to apparel to memorabilia, everything Orioles has sold well since the club's startling run ended in Yankee Stadium on Oct. 12. "Things continue to be very strong," Orioles spokesman Greg Bader said.

In a holiday sales season that generally was considered tepid, one retail sector banked on the "cool factor" to ring up sizzling sales. Offering ripped jeans and T-shirts with saucy marketing techniques that appeal to teens and the college crowd, stores such as Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle outfitters and Aeropostale easily outdistanced the classic stores and discounters. WINNERS -- UP .............................................. LOSERS -- DOWN Abercrombie & Fitch +29% .......

The heavyweights of the U.S. retail industry reported holiday sales numbers yesterday that showed the recession had won a round, but analysts were cheered that it wasn't a knockout.With consumer confidence at its lowest level since 1982, the retail industry was expecting a lousy performance, and lousy is what it got. But industry analysts said the results were no worse that expected."Going into the season with such lousy expectations, you have to be impressed that we didn't fall totally out of bed," said Budd Bugatch, director of investment relations at Ferris Baker Watts in Baltimore.

Stores in outlet centers owned by Baltimore-based Prime Retail Inc. saw their sales rise 4.08 percent during the holiday season, the company said yesterday.Customer traffic at the company's 50 outlet centers nationwide also increased -- by 4.77 percent -- for the period from Thanksgiving to Christmas.Prime Retail, the world's largest developer, owner and manager of outlet centers, based its results on a preliminary sampling of sales reported by about 500 merchants in all categories.``Several factors, including a growing consumer emphasis on value, the great variety and large selection of brand-name merchandise available and an additional shopping day, helped achieve these increases,'' said William H. Carpenter Jr., president and chief operating officer for the real estate investment trust.

Relax. There are two extra shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this holiday season. Take a deep breath. Retailers, though cautious about hiring seasonal help, have inventories well stocked in the hope that consumer optimism brings joy to the world of shopping. Have a reality check. Rising gasoline prices and heating oil bills remain concerns, though consumer sentiment and recent retail sales, especially clothing purchases, have been robust. Investors and potential investors in the stocks of retailers are well aware that no matter what the experts may predict, it will be the consumers who ultimately determine whether this is a holiday season to rival last year's 5 percent sales gain or one only Ebenezer Scrooge could love.

"Who am I? Why am I here?" That's what most American consumers seemed to be asking themselves the past several years as they walked warily through the doorways of the nation's retail stores. Too often, folks concerned about their jobs and the economy were "just looking." They weren't real consumers at all.Early projections about holiday retail sales seasons are notoriously inaccurate. Nonetheless, the investment community believes pent-up demand, a more positive consumer attitude and tighter retailing cost controls will add up to a solid 1992 holiday sales season.

ONCE THE GUESSING about the presidential election is over, another contest will begin - betting on holiday retail sales. It's tempting to forecast sales as a stock market signal. But it's "a mug's game," says Nomura Securities International economist David Resler. That's because shoppers and retailers in recent years have engaged in an increasingly intense game of brinkmanship - balancing merchandise inventory against hopes for price markdowns as the season progresses. Here's the dilemma: Investment timing based on holiday sales probably should wait until the end of January, when the dust has settled.

Domingo Catalan powered through the Thanksgiving night crowds to get his children toys. He methodically checked all the boxes on his relatives' wish lists on Black Friday. And before he goes to work as a data analyst for a government contractor on Cyber Monday, he expects to look for online deals to have shipped to his brother's family in Germany. So whom was Catalan, a Crofton resident, shopping for on Sunday morning at Bass Pro Shops at Arundel Mills? "Me," he grinned, pausing to jerk his thumb toward his chest as he put an Under Armour winter jacket and fishing gear into the back of his Ford pick-up truck.

Diane Townes waited in line for 12 hours to get her door-buster deals — printers, a laptop and a 50-inch television — so imagine her chagrin when it looked like she wouldn't be able to squeeze it all into her car Friday morning. The Owings Mills nurse shivered in the cold at 5:30 a.m. outside the Towson Walmart, watching store workers try unsuccessfully to fit her $298 Emerson TV in the trunk and back seat. She finally folded down her back seats and shoved it through the trunk, capping a shopping spree that had started Thanksgiving afternoon.

Consumers have come to expect the deep discounts that define Black Friday, but retailers hope to entice shoppers this year with more choices in how and when they buy. Responding to what they say is consumer demand, retailers have pushed store openings into Thanksgiving evening as people are finishing their holiday feasts and replaced door buster opening events with waves of timed sales targeting different consumers. For some of the nation's biggest chains, that means turning Thanksgiving Day into the new "Black Friday," sparking a backlash from some consumers and employees.

Holiday sales are expected to rise 3 percent in November and December compared to the last two months of 2011, a trade group for the shopping center industry is forecasting. The expected increase is pegged to an index measuring sales at chain stores open at least a year. The forecast released Tuesday by The International Council of Shopping Centers also calls for slight increases in sales at shopping centers and in sales at stores selling general merchandise, apparel and accessories, furniture and other items.

First of all, Southwest Airlines needs to get with my schedule. I expect to see airfare sales on Tuesdays. When the airline launches them on Fridays, it gets me all frazzled. Routine, people. But the sale Southwest announced today is anything but routine. It features airfares for holiday travel - from Dec. 13 to Jan. 5. And while there are blackout dates, there are not nearly as many as you might expect for a peak travel period. Blackout dates are Dec. 23, Dec. 26, Dec. 30 and Jan. 2. See, that's not so bad. One-way fares from Baltimore range from $49 to Boston  to $199  for a trip to San Francisco.

Lured by huge discounts and earlier store hours, more shoppers crowded malls and bought online during this year's Thanksgiving weekend — opening their wallets a bit wider and offering retailers an encouraging start to the holiday season. Shoppers in Maryland and across the country spent $45 billion from Thanksgiving through Sunday, or an average of $365.34 per person. That represents a 6.4 percent increase from $343.31 last year, according to figures released Sunday by the National Retail Federation.

WASHINGTON -- Inventories of goods at U.S. wholesalers unexpectedly dropped in September as climbing sales helped clear warehouses, government figures showed yesterday.Wholesale inventories fell 1.3 percent during the month, helped by a large decline in inventories of nondurable goods such as drugs, apparel and raw farm products. In August, inventories dropped a revised 0.1 percent, previously reported as a 0.5 percent gain.September's dip in wholesale inventories hints that many retailers are stocking up ahead of the busiest selling time of the holiday season.

Shoppers by the thousands crowded Baltimore-area stores, beginning their shopping excursions in long lines in the wee hours, proving that Black Friday still holds its appeal to many as the best day to nab holiday deals. Packs of consumers came out even though retailers have been offering similar deals for weeks now — some since around Halloween — in one of the earliest attempts by the industry to try and ratchet up the start of the season. Many shoppers came out right after the dishes were cleared from the Thanksgiving meal in search of deals on Black Friday, the day given the name because it has historically been the day retailers turn a profit for the year, entering the black.

The holiday shopping season was once a game of retail chicken, as shoppers delayed buying in hopes that stores would drop prices the longer they held out. Extremists even waited to buy until after Christmas, when retailers slashed prices on items nobody else wanted. But now the longer shoppers wait, the more likely they are to miss out. This year, retailers are once again ratcheting up the holiday deals weeks before Christmas — a trend that began with fervor at the onset of the recession in 2008 — as they compete for budget-conscious shoppers and try to prevent too much leftover inventory at the end of the season.