Retailers

Jon Vincent expects more visitors to his blackfriday.info Web site this Thursday and Friday than he had all of last November. The Boston-area resident suspects that mostly has to do with shoppers hungering for bargains in a bleak economy and partly to do with people becoming more comfortable with searching and shopping online. "Traffic has doubled since last year," said Vincent, 28, who reserved the blackfriday.info domain name in 2004 after trying to help his parents shop online. He also created the Web coupon site keepcash.

Dreary weather, tax talk and emaciated IRS refund checks combined to make April yet another cruel month for U.S. retailers.Parentheses (which indicate a negative in financial reports) were flying yesterday as the nation's largest chains reported last month's comparable-store sales, those at stores that were also open last year.Otto Grote, retail analyst with Derby Securities in New York, said the causes for the April downturn were "70 percent weather and 30 percent politics."Chains that deal in clothing and seasonal items took an especially big hit as cold, rainy weather dominated much of the country early in the month.

Baltimore developer Patrick Turner plans to start construction March 1 in an ambitious plan to develop the formerly industrial shores of the Middle Branch, with the first buildings in the $1.4 billion community - including a 65-story, mixed-use skyscraper - to get under way by 2009. Turner, president of Turner Development Group, has spent several days this week introducing his Westport project to retailers at a major shopping center convention in Las Vegas. Tomorrow, the developer will present a site plan to the city's Urban Design and Architecture Review Panel.

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.

Consumers ignored rising interest rates and higher gasoline prices in February and shopped for household goods, electronics and spring fashions, boosting sales at the nations biggest chain stores. Retailers largely met or exceeded expectations for the month, typically a lackluster selling period between post-holiday sales and spring. But the booming economy that gave retailers a banner 1999 continued to fuel brisk spending, analysts said yesterday, as retailers reported their monthly sales.

Baltimore-area retailers are hoping freedom will ring the cash registers this Independence Day weekend.Recent economic surveys have shown that consumer confidence is up and local economists said last week that the recession is over in Maryland.So far, area merchants say they haven't seen such an upturn, but they're hopeful this weekend will bring lots of shoppers as proof of what they've been hearing from economists."The newspapers say consumers are showing more confidence, but I don't see it in the sales.

Back-to-school sales failed to bring large numbers of shoppers back to Maryland stores again this year, as the recession threatens to keep hold for yet another season.And while sales-tax statistics for August -- the kick-off month for what is usually retailers' first push for the busy fall and holiday seasons -- are still weeks away, the Maryland Retail Merchant's Association is predicting lackluster back-to-school results."A lot of retailers are probably going back to the drawing board after this," said Tom Saquella, president of the Annapolis-based association.

Last-minute discounts and special promotions didn't appear to help salvage a lackluster holiday shopping season for many of the nation's retailers with various merchants reporting disappointing December sales yesterday. Retailers are counting on customers to spend their gift cards this month to spur sales. Merchants record revenue on gift cards once they are redeemed, making January a crucial time for retailers. Though many of the nation's largest retailers such as Target Corp. and Gap Inc. posted weaker-than-expected results, some luxury stores such as Nordstrom Inc. and Saks Inc. posted strong December returns.

American consumers might be gloomy about the economy, but they appear to be starting to shop their woes away.The nation's major retailers reported yesterday that September brought healthy sales -- robust enough that some analysts saw them as the first bluebird of an economic spring.Many companies, including some that had been stumbling along in recent months, posted double-digit year-to-year gains in stores that were also open in September last year.J. C. Penney, No. 4 in the industry, led the way among the nation's major retailers, as it has most of the year, with a 14.4 percent gain in comparable store sales.

NEW YORK -- The nation's retailers, still grooving on the high from the Christmas season, came face to face yesterday with a future that might not include many of them.In one of the final sessions at the National Retail Federation's annual convention here, four "futurists" painted a picture of a decade in which angry consumers buy less but demand more, turn against mammoth retailers and hold merchants to ethical standards that haven't applied in the past.Faith Popcorn, a well-known trend-spotter with Brain Reserve Inc. in New York, told the retailers that every merchant in the 1990s should wake up feeling "anxious or nauseous."