Archive for November, 2011

StoreIntel Research Alert: Black Friday & URBN

Published November 30, 2011 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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If you haven’t yet checked out our new service StoreIntel, please do so and let us know what you think. We will be doing a lot of mall-walks and ramping up our research and analysis throughout the Holiday season:

Black Friday Data Points: The media has made it quite clear how robust business was for the first major weekend of the Holiday season. Most, if not all major retailers reduced margins for the sake of driving major sales volume – this has been the major theme…read more

Research Note: Urban Outfitters (URBN) – We are feeling very strongly about the potential rebound for the Anthropologie brand as we move into Q1 and Q2 of 2012.

The brand lost momentum as the cut and sewn knit cycle came to an end for the back half of 2011. It’s a very normal trend to gear up and get behind…read more

Wednesday News & Notes: Previewing November Comps

Published November 30, 2011 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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Now that all the hype and hoopla over Black Friday (summary here) and Cyber Monday are over, we can look ahead to November same-store sales reports and 4th quarter outlooks.

One other note: As strong as e-commerce sales growth was over the Holiday weekend – comScore said online sales from Thursday through Monday grew 20.5% to $3.577 billion – total online sales in the month-to-date period through Nov. 28th were still only up 15% over last year, which is just ahead of the 13.7% growth overall in the 3rd quarter. In other words, sales were most likely pulled forward and heavy promotional activity might have taken some share from brick-and-mortar stores, but it doesn’t seem the pace is picking up much from the fall.

22 chains will report monthly comps tomorrow morning (Walgreen won’t report until Monday and Zumiez reports after the close), and Reuters is only expecting a 3.3% increase compared a 5.5% gain last November. Barron’s speculates that chains which delayed openings or didn’t heavily promote Black Friday sales such as Costco and JC Penney could suffer.

Our own observations were that names such as Dillard’s definitely suffered from later openings (7-8am Black Friday), as well as warmer weather which held back sales of winter apparel and tough comparisons to last year (+8%).

Earnings reports so far this week have confirmed the trend of a sequential sales slowdown and merchandise margins were under pressure Continue reading ‘Wednesday News & Notes: Previewing November Comps’

Tuesday News & Notes

Published November 29, 2011 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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Weekly Chain Store Sales posted their best year-on-year gains since July as extended shopping hours, deep discounts and heavy promotional activity drove consumers to the stores in droves over the Black Friday weekend. Electronics sales led the pack as shoppers snapped up flat-screen tv’s, iPads and video game consoles, but the 2nd-warmest Thanksgiving weekend in 19 years held back sales of winter merchandise.

ICSC-Goldman Sachs Weekly US Chain Store Sales

The ICSC saw sales increase 4.0% over last year and said the average shopper has completed 44.3% of their Holiday shopping (vs 44.1% last year) and 28% haven’t yet started their Holiday gift buying. Michael Niemira, ICSC VP of research and chief economist, said. “In the coming weeks holiday promotions will continue to drive traffic, as well as sales, as consumers continue to complete their holiday shopping,”

The Johnson Redbook Index rose 5.4% year-over-year and the 3.9% gain for the month. “Some retailers said it was the best Thanksgiving weekend they had seen for some time.” said Catlin Levis, Redbook analyst. “This final burst of strength was sufficient to enable many stores to improve their overall monthly averages, although the lift was relatively slight given the shortness of the time remaining.” she added.

Cyber Monday: IBM reported that online sales jumped 29.3% compared to Black Friday and 33.0% over last year’s ‘Cyber Monday’ Continue reading ‘Tuesday News & Notes’

Monday News & Notes

Published November 28, 2011 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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Analysts are giddy over the impossibly strong retail results over the Holiday weekend, which we summarized earlier today. A few caveats though:

Consumers are notoriously unreliable when it comes to estimating their own spending and the unofficial kick-off to the Holiday shopping season is not a very good indicator of how the rest of the period will go. Take the NRF’s report that Thursday-Sunday sales jumped 16.4% to $52.4 billion this year based on a survey sample of 3,826 consumers. This same survey projected that Black Friday weekend sales surged 18.5% in 2008 and consumers said they each spent 7.2% more than the previous year. When all was said and done, total Nov-Dec retail sales that year plunged 4.4%.

Nevertheless, all eyes now turn to “Cyber Monday” results. In case you’re wondering, this is a marketing term created by Shop.org back in 2005 so online-only retailers didn’t feel left out of the Black Friday parade. Shoppers of course have fully embraced the made-up Holiday, as last year’s haul topped $1 billion, which was the largest online selling day of the year. As of noon today, IBM says sales are up about 20% over last year and we wouldn’t be surprised to see total Monday online sales above $1.3 billion.

Just remember, we are still in the early innings and while this past weekend was strong, one-third of all holiday sales are historically made in the week prior to Christmas.


Retail Reads to Start Your Week:

  • Walmart’s Black Friday Disaster: Website Crippled, Violence In Stores (TechCrunch)
  • IPad-Crazed Toddlers Spur Holiday Sales (Bloomberg)
  • Clouds at PacSun: Retailer looking for cash as it loses its cool factor (NY Post)
  • Retail Becomes Fastest-Growing Mobile Category (eMarketer)
  • 15 Facts About McDonald’s That Will Blow Your Mind (Business Insider)
  • Cash-Strapped Americans Largely Swallow Price Hikes During Holidays (Huffington Post)
  • Kindle sales quadrupled on Black Friday over last year (Amazon)
  • Retailers tap digital tools for seamless shopper experience (Warc)
  • India finally opening its $400 billion retail industry to foreign chains (Businessweek)
  • Retailers arming staff with in-store mobile devices (WSJ)
  • How Smartphones, Price-Check Apps, and Daily Deals Are Changing the Holiday Shopping Experience (Time)
  • Black Friday Boom Masks Physical Retailers’ Desperation (Yahoo! Finance)

Black Friday Weekend Wrap: Retail Spending by the Numbers

Published November 27, 2011 Uncategorized 1 Comment
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By all indications, the Holiday shopping season got off to a robust start as a record number of consumers visited stores and made purchases online this past weekend.

However, Black Friday weekend has historically not been a very good predictor of overall Holiday retail sales. Both the National Retail Federation and ShopperTrak saw record spending over Black Friday weekend in 2008, but overall that Holiday season saw by far the worst performance on record as overall sales in the November-December period tumbled 4.4%.

Nonetheless, it appears the American consumer is still willing to spend despite severe economic headwinds and near record-low confidence. We believe chains including Best Buy, Macy’s and Walmart (despite some well-publicized issues) benefited the most from pre-midnight openings, strong merchandising and competitive price-value relationships, while not surprisingly laggards such as Sears Holdings and Gap continue their struggle to connect with shoppers.

Below is a summary of Black Friday weekend spending by the numbers. We will update these figures on Tuesday as additional metrics become available and report on Cyber Monday, which is expected to generate over $1.2 billion in e-commerce spending:

National Retail Federation (NRF):

Black Friday Weekend Retail Shopping Estimates

  • department stores continue to be the most popular shopping destination (48.7%), followed by discount stores (37.5%), the internet (35.2%), electronics stores (30.8%), clothing/accessories stores (24.6%) and grocery stores (23.8%)
  • avg male spent $484.24 vs $317.19 per avg female, with average male spending nearly twice as much ($201.62 vs $101.93) online
  • those making more than $50k spent nearly 80% more ($493.31) vs those making less than $50k ($274.27) and well more than twice as much ($202.91 vs $87.97) online

“Stuffed to the brim from their holiday meals and eager to shop, more consumers than ever turned out for retailers’ Black Friday promotions, a promising sign for the economic recovery,” said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay. “After an historic holiday weekend Continue reading ‘Black Friday Weekend Wrap: Retail Spending by the Numbers’

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