Holiday sales highest since 2005
NEW YORK — Retailers are riding high after ebullient U.S. consumers shopped at the healthiest pace in more than a decade over the holiday season. But merchants can’t afford to rest easy.
None of the pressure on them has eased, and the fight for customers’ attention will only intensify. Retailers trying to hold their own against an expanding Amazon will have to keep sprucing up their stores and investing in the quick delivery that shoppers want. Those kinds of moves may bite into their profits, but they’ll save money from recent tax changes.
Store closures, already at a post-recession high, could keep coming. And in a sign of just how critical it is that stores get delivery right, Walmart’s Sam’s Club says it is converting some of the locations it is closing into e-commerce fulfillment centers. Companies trying to leverage their stores may think about following.
Several retailers including Target, Kohl’s and J.C. Penney reported solid holiday sales gains. Retail sales rose 0.4 percent in December, the Commerce Department said yesterday, after a 0.9 percent surge in November. Those figures include online sales.
Spending for the two months combined was the best since 2005, according to IHS Markit, an economic consulting firm.
And the National Retail Federation trade group said that by its measure, which excludes sales from autos, gas and restaurants and includes non-store sales like those from catalogs, holiday spending rose a better-thanexpected 5.5 percent. That sailed past the group’s original projections and marked the biggest increase since the 5.2 percent gain in 2010. Online shopping, which is included in the results, increased 11.5 percent.