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March Sales May Be Gauge of Recovery

-- Gifts and Dec, 3/5/2010 12:46:00 PM

New York — Strong retail sales in February may pale compared with March, according to the Wall Street Journal. March sales will include more Easter-related shopping this year, compared to 2009, and may be the definitive indicator of whether consumers have finally found a spending comfort level.

March is traditionally when consumer spending kicks in after a slow January and February. It also is Easter time, which spurs buying of everything from little girls’ dresses to chocolate bunnies, baskets and egg-coloring kits.

Early indications are that March same-store sales will do even better than February’s 4 percent rise, which included Macy’s Inc., Target Corp., Dillard’s Inc., Aeropostale Inc. and even higher-end teen retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Co. beating Wall Street’s projections.

In 2009, March same-store sales fell 5 percent on top of a 2.1 percent decline the year before.
Easter is the fourth-largest U.S. holiday behind Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day in terms of spending according to the National Retail Federation (NRF). Last year, consumers spent $12.73 billion on Easter-related items including apparel, holiday goods and decorations, according to NRF figures, and this year the holiday falls on April 4, a week earlier than in 2009.

Easter season "is the time that consumers tend to buy fresh, new things," said Jharonne Martis, director of consumer research at Thomson Reuters. "Now that February has given us six straight months of positive comps, albeit on mostly necessities, this is retailers’ time to show if they can bring in customers for more discretionary items."

The season will indeed test the procedures that retailers have spent more than a year putting in place to better balance inventory so they can sell more at full price and less at big discounts. — Karen Talley, Dow Jones Newswires

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