Posts under ‘Christmas/holiday trading’

New York in early January would never seem to be the most hospitable of months to visit this great City. The winds that whip through the Avenues and Streets can cut right through you. A year ago, when retailers converged on New York for the NRF convention, the mood matched the weather as the full [...]

Signing off my last blog before the Christmas holiday I said that prospects for the New Year could be made or broken by the consumer and their continuing capacity to surprise. And surprise they did here in the UK with retailers reporting very strong trading which got even stronger with the start of their clearance [...]

Its that time of year when the media are full of reviews of both the year and the decade about to end - the “noughties” as it has been dubbed. What a decade of contrasts it has been, but best characterised as being about “boom” and “bust”. For much of the decade, the economy within [...]

So now we know how Christmas 2009 could finish up for the retail industry. America’s big Thanksgiving holiday which is followed by “Black Friday” and now “Cyber Monday” has taken on the role of being a global benchmark for retailers. And the official verdict, as supplied by the National Retail Federation’s analysis of members’ sales, [...]

Around the world, retailers are getting understandably nervous. We’re now well and truly into the count-down towards the critical Christmas season for many countries. After the year we have been having, a good or bad season could literally make or break a number of retailers. The mood in recent weeks seems to have shifted from [...]

Here in New York for the annual National Retail Federation convention the temperature remains sub zero and the retail mood is pretty similar. All around the city, the last signs of Christmas - discarded trees and garlands, lie abandoned in the streets like the debris from a long party. Which is pretty much how many [...]

As retailers around the world report their end of year or holiday period trading figures it is increasingly feeling like watching sandcastles and the incoming tide. Which ones are built firmly enough to withstand the tide and which ones will be swept away? 
Reading some commentaries, you would think that the whole of retailing will be swept [...]

Quite how bad the Christmas trading period proved to be here in the UK is being overshadowed by the almost daily updates on companies going into receivership or administration. The news from the US does not sound much more encouraging with Wall Street continuing to mark down retail stocks on the back of an expectation [...]

Watching TV last night and something appeared on the screen that was totally unexpected and completely surprising. Amongst the total dominance of air time by retailers attempting to spread Christmas cheer (at great prices) there suddenly appeared an ad for the coffee brand, Kenco. Its single message was on its sustainability policies in the coffee growing regions [...]

Spending just a few days in New York is a real eye-opener to the scale of the difficulties facing retailers here. The long, lingering late autumn mildness gave way to a big chill that blew into the City and with it dropped the mood of pretty much every retailer. A cold snap the week before [...]