- Lightning Round OT: AFLAC, Valero and More
- Lightning Round: Chesapeake, Corning, J&J and More
- Cramer: What’s the Worst-Case Scenario?
- Game Plan: The Crash of '87 Scenario
- Cramer’s Double Secret Borrow-Binge Plan
- Your First Move For Monday October 13th
- History In The Making
- The S&P 500 Loses $1.8 Trillion in Market Cap for the Week
- Web Extra: GE & Goldman Sachs
- Stock Market Crisis: Nation's Mayors Sound Off
- US Banks Keep Pressure on SEC to Deal With Shorts
- Financial Crisis Has Inflationary And Deflationary Potential
- What the Pros Say: Swap Jitters, Bottom Searches
- Viacom Warns of Third-Quarter Profit Shortfall
- US Consumers Lose Faith in Fed Due to Crisis
- Jefferies' Hogan: Market Will Bottom Today
- Traders Needing Cash Even Dumping Bonds
- Greenspan Sees First Half 2009 U.S. Housing Recovery
ABOUT THIS BLOG
|
This blog will look at the winners and losers in the retail space. Who has the right strategy to capture consumer dollars? It also will look for trends in consumer spending and how that will impact the economy.
Text Size 
 |
CNBC.com |
] even with the promotional pricing and marketing campaign that the world's biggest retailer has been pushing. The only sales growth at Wal-Mart stores was at its Sam's Club division (+2.7%) which helped boost the overall Wal-Mart comp to a meager .4% gain.Keep in mind that the weak gain happened after Wal-Mart rolled out markdowns on more than 15,000 items. That said, the discount space was one of the few areas that saw sales gains. Shoppers stuck to buying basics at Walgreens [WAG
Loading...
()
] (6.9%)and Target [TGT
Loading...
()
] (+4%) and spent a lot less on discretionary items like coats, sweaters and clothing.
The apparel sector was hit hard. The only department store to post positive same store sales was Saks [SKS
Loading...
()
] +10.6% and teen retailers Zumiez [ZUMZ
Loading...
()
] was able to buck the downward trend thanks to being on top of the fashion cycle. More than 64% of the nation's biggest retailers missed sales estimates for last month.
Wall Street had fair warning that retailers were going to post weak sales results for the month of October and that's why you're seeing short-covering of retail stocks today.
What I'm watching is to see just how effective promotions/markdowns are in bringing shoppers into stores. The gimmicks run for freebies to competitors to speedy shopping incentives. While pricey promotions, these may work better than outright markdowns which hurt margins and may not build traffic as effectively. We'll see if it works.
Best Buy [BBY
Loading...
()
] will have a Reward zone discount shopping event for frequent customers this weekend. Competitor Circuit City [CC
Loading...
()
] is giving away 30 free Mazda cars and electronics to customers who come in store to play their "drive to 65" instant win game. J. Crew [JCG
Loading...
()
] is creating "gift card kiosk" express lanes for customers who want to shop quickly and not wait on line with customers making product purchases.
Interestingly, Victoria's Secret CEO Sharen Turney told me yesterday that the store does not plan on marking down heavily like they did last year. (VS's same store sales were down 7% in October which dragged down parent company Limited's [LTD
Loading...
()
] overall comp to down 6%.)
Can their marketing and new product get shoppers excited enough to spend on lingerie when they aren't on other clothing items? We'll have to see. Her interview will air later this month on CNBC before the December 4th runway show.
Questions? Comments?
Del.icio.us
Digg It
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes